Class 

Book 

i 

GopyrightI?_ 

COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



A Book of Remembrance 



A Book 
Of Remembrance 

By 

DAVID GREGG, D.D. 



Compiled by 
FRANK DILNOT 



A book of remembrance was written before him." 

— Malachi 3:16. 




New York 

Fleming H. 

London 



Chicago 

Revell Company 

a nd Edinburgh 



Copyright, 1921, by 
FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 



1 



Gr 



MAR 11 *22 



New York : 1 58 Fifth Avenue 
Chicago : 1 7 North Wabash Ave. 
London : 2 1 Paternoster Square 
{Edinburgh : 75 Princes Street 



©CLA654883 



Foreword 



ON the morning of October eleventh, nineteen 
hundred and nineteen, Dr. David Gregg, 
only twelve hours removed from virile 
geniality and mellow words, went from among those 
whom he had loved and with whom he had lived for 
a long span of years. He had wondered how it 
would come, that passing. Throughout an eventful 
and happy life he had contemplated the transition, 
had surveyed it with an expectation and a calm as- 
surance which is not within the temperament of the 
average religious man or woman however devout. 
The dread of death was not in him. " He was mas- 
ter of his fate, captain of his soul." Well may we 
seek the secret. 

The death of Dr. Gregg derived its inspiration 
from his life. With a rich and storied character, 
with a wit that spared not saint or sinner, with a 
sympathy which drew to him the stricken and the 
sore at heart, he was in the best sense of the word a 
man of the world, a scholar, a traveller, with few 
illusions, and the gentlest heart. He could be tender. 
Fears were not in his make-up. And so it came about 
that this great Christian was a friend and confidant 
not merely of the devout but of men who negatived 
religion entirely and of those who differed as to 
dogma and who practically never went to church. Dr. 
Gregg's power in the pulpit and his gift of adminis- 

5 



6 



FOEEWOED 



t ration were manifested in the various positions to 
which he was called. His literary talent had been 
manifested to tens of thousands in his books. It is 
not to demonstrate these things that this work has 
been compiled. It has been put together in order to 
show David Gregg, the man, — some of his inmost 
thoughts, — to indicate the workings of his mind, to 
place on record some of the facts of history, some of 
the great books, some of the great lives that helped 
to mold the activities of a vigorous mind and imagi- 
nation. 

Dr. Gregg, a man of the intensest private industry, 
wrote diligently every day in his note-book reflections 
and facts for his own guidance. They present a 
many-sided view of life, life in the past, and in the 
present, and in the future. His comments and 
his lines of thought will have an interest far 
outside church circles, but will also be of out- 
standing value to those engaged in the church 
ministry, particularly, perhaps, to those who are 
entering on that work. They give in concentrated 
form an idea of the reactions of a gifted brain 
throughout two generations. They are the more 
valuable because they were not intended for the pub- 
lic eye. Among Dr. Gregg's memoranda was the fol- 
lowing: 

" This writing is wholly personal and private, in- 
tended only for auto-communion. So many inci- 
dents in one's life, which at the time of occurrence 
were interesting and were thought absolutely unfor- 
gettable, slip out of memory altogether or come forth 
only at long intervals that it is well to keep them in 
sight by a visible and permanent record. That is all 
this record is intended to do — to keep the happenings 



FOEEWOED 



7 



of the author's past life in sight that he may have 
fellowship with himself. This writing is in no sense 
a public document. It is wholly a matter between 
myself and me." 

The family of Dr. Gregg have come to the con- 
clusion after careful perusal of these note-books that 
not only will there be no breach of confidence in the 
publication of a selection from them but that they 
will give a helpful interest and stimulation to a wide 
circle who knew Dr. Gregg and his work, and may 
not be without their value for others beyond this 
circle. They have been coordinated but not altered. 
There has been no attempt to smooth them into a 
more rotund form. Exclamations, occasional repeti- 
tions, short sentences serve to indicate the workings, 
of the writer's mind and give a freshness that la- 
bored effort might perhaps have dissipated. 

It is well before setting out the words and 
thoughts of a man to have some indication of what 
he was and what he did in life. Born in Pittsburgh 
of Covenanting stock and destined for the ministry 
he became, after a successful college career and con- 
siderable travel in Europe, the pastor of the Third 
Reformed Presbyterian Church in New York City. 
Though a very young man his work was marked by 
almost immediate success. He was elected to be 
moderator of the General Assembly of the Reformed 
Presbyterian Church, being at that time the young- 
est person who had ever presided over the delibera- 
tions of that body. Growing and broadening as the 
years went on he found that his Christian principles 
could not be confined within the tenets of Conve- 
nanterism, and thus it was that in 1887 he accepted 
a call and went to the Park Street Congregational 



8 



FOEEWOED 



Church in Boston. In this ministry his power as a 
preacher brought him into notice far beyond local 
confines. Within a comparatively short time he was 
one of the great religious figures of the decade. He 
came to Brooklyn in charge of the Lafayette Avenue 
Church, succeeding Dr. Cuyler, where he built up one 
of the great religious organizations of the country. 
His fame spread far and wide and visitors to his 
church included many of the most distinguished men 
of the time. In 1902 he was chosen President of 
Western Theological Seminary, and in 1909 he was 
made President Emeritus. In these few sentences is 
given the framework of a powerful life. Honors 
came to David Gregg in profusion; he was made 
Doctor of Divinity by New York University, and 
Doctor of Laws by Washington and Jefferson Col- 
lege, his Alma Mater. Among his distinctions was 
the LL.D. conferred upon him by Livingstone Col- 
lege, a colored institution, out of gratitude for the 
influence he had consistently wielded in behalf of the 
negroes from the Civil War onward. 

Dr. Gregg was not a man who believed that re- 
ligion should be doleful or that an air of martyrdom 
always accompanied sainthood. A penetrating hu- 
mor derived from his Scotch and Irish ancestors gave 
point to his words and frequently pushed home its 
lesson. One secret of his power was a tempera- 
mental sympathy which enabled him to be in imme- 
diate touch with all sincere people whatever their 
views and whatever their feelings. Sensitive to a 
degree he had a personal modesty which perhaps 
occasionally detracted from what might have been 
the power of his natural gifts, but if it did this also 
made him the more lovable. In the notes that follow 



FOEEWOED 



9 



there will be found abundant manifestations of the 
fibre of his mentality and the character of his mental 
outlook. There will be found spiritual exaltation, a 
profound belief in personality, in the human soul as 
distinct from mere theory. With the gift of lumi- 
nous phrase Dr. Gregg was no word maker and there 
was no sentence that he framed that did not contain 
a thought. His words, moreover, have this supreme 
appeal that he lived from start to finish in accord 
with what he spoke and wrote. His death leaves a 
wide space in many lives. Those who remain may 
find comfort in the concluding words of Dr. Albert- 
son in his funeral sermon in Lafayette Church. 
" His death is not the sinking of an evening star in 
the darkness of night, but the fading of a morning 
star lost to our view by the brightness of the day." 

Frank Dilnot. 

New York. 



Contents 



I. Religion 13 

Christ— The Bible— Bible Helps— The Church- 
Ministers — Little Sermons — Prayers — God's Logic 
— The Human Will — The Lord's Supper — Evi- 
dences for Eternity — Nature and the Eternal — 
Science and the Soul — Death — Prophets — The 
Jews — Puritanism. 

II. Christian Virtues 96 

Faith — Love — Sympathy — Truth — The Heroic Heart 
— Thanksgiving — Inspiration — Self-Examination 
— Maxims. 

III. The State 117 

Patriotism — Statesmanship — Peace and War. 

IV. Society 120 

Great Lives — Personalities — Duties — Work — Desires 
— Denunciation — Defeat — Punishment — High So- 
ciety — Wealth — Women — Companionship — Elo- 
quence — Conversation — Development — Youth and 
Age. 

V. Marriage and Family Life . . .149 

The Wedded State — Fathers and Mothers — Children. 

VI. History and Travel . . . .152 

History — Travel. 

VII. Art .162 

Beauty— Symbolism — Music — The Theatre. 

VIII. Philosophy and Literature . . .178 

Philosophy — Literary Art — Study — Reading — Writ- 
ers and Non- Writers — Prose Writers — Poets — The 
Personal Side — Side Lights — Illustrations — The 
Classics — Narrative — Words — Religion in Books — 
Ethics — Humor — The Reasoners — The Common 
People — Shakespeare — Carlyle — Comparisons — 
Books Summarized. 

Alphabetical Index 253 

11 



I 



RELIGION 

CHRIST. 

EVEN a name may be transfigured. The name 
Jesus is a notable example. No name recalls 
so much, or foretells and guarantees so much. 
It is for us as John said: " the lamp of the Godhead 
itself." All the glory of the Godhead shines through 
it. True it was written in contempt above His cross 
in Hebrew, and culture and the power of Empire 
united to deride Him. But lo, and behold, Greek, the 
language of culture in which He was mocked, is dead. 
Lo, and behold, Hebrew, the sacred tongue in which 
religion embalmed Him, is dead. 

Thou hast given us Jesus Christ as a model. He 
gives us right and elevating conceptions of God. He 
raises our conceptions. He revives the ideals that 
are beginning to fade out. He tones up our spiritual 
eyes so that they discern things accurately, rightly, 
and clearly. 

Christ Himself and the things of Christ create a 
longing for Christ. His presence renews us and 
gives us a new life; rekindles our love, and calls for 
prolonged and intimate communion. He makes all 
things new. He made the Old Testament a new book 
to the two disciples on the way to Emmaus. 

Learn from Paul how to deal with Him. " I will 

13 



14 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBAXCE 



show you all the glory of Greece/' said an ancient 
Spartan to his friend and so saying he took him to 
Solon, the Spartan lawgiver. " Is this all ? " asked 
his friend. " Yes, this is all," replied the ancient. 
" When thou hast seen Solon, thou hast seen all." 
We know what the ancient meant. Solon made 
Greece. What he thought Greece became. He was 
the typical Grecian. Christ is the typical Christian. 
He carries in Him all our present and our future. 
He has glorified our nature and to be like Him is the 
pinnacle of Christian privilege. He who sees Christ 
sees Christianity and all the glories and privileges 
which Christianity brings to the human race. 

Keep yourself in the Christ atmosphere. An artist 
spends hours and days in the Louvre, Paris, or in the 
Pitti Palace, Florence. He bows before the master- 
pieces of the great of old. He worships their em- 
bodied ideals of beauty. He breathes their air until 
their power of loveliness has molded his taste. This 
is part of his growth and his transformation. It is 
his equipment. It is his education. 

Regard the impact of the personality of Jesus of 
Nazareth on mankind! He is the fulfillment of 
everything we find in our nature. He is the greatest 
power in the human world. He is a history, a career, 
a revelation, a religion, a civilization, a golden age. 

Professor Burkitt calculates that our Gospels pre- 
serve for us incidents from perhaps forty days of the 
life of our Lord, yet this is really adequate. Jesus 
is more truly known than any other character of his- 
tory. 



RELIGION 



15 



The fourth Gospel is a wonderful masterpiece. 
Like the Socrates of the Platonic Dialogues, the Jesus 
of the fourth Gospel is removed from the domain of 
actual history to the realm of the ideal. 

Ruth and Boaz were ancestors of Jesus Christ, the 
Messiah. In the soul of Jesus the wedding-bells of 
Ruth and Boaz are rung once more. What is it but 
the sound of those bells that He hears, when He cries 
out: "Many shall come from the east and the west 
and from the north and the south and shall sit down 
with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob in the Kingdom of 
God." 

Whoever Jesus is, He in interesting. His life is 
interesting. His sayings are interesting. His per- 
sonality is interesting, tremendously interesting. I 
can conceive of no higher ideal than the Christ we 
know. 

While the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God was 
not absolutely new, the emphasis which Jesus laid 
upon it was original. 

The sublimest thing in human history is Jesus and 
His redeeming passion. 

Never an untruth of the Master has been discov- 
ered. Why? There is none. 

Christ is unique and perfect. Everything in Him 
corresponds and harmonizes with every other thing. 
Deity dwells in Him; and everything fits into that. 
Let us see the truth of this. He spake wonderful 
words, golden sentence followed golden sentence as 



16 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



He set before the world the Fatherhood of God, the 
brotherhood of men. His parables were like finished 
pictures from the studio of a Raphael; His promises 
were like anthems from harps of gold; His words 
about Heaven were as though the Apocalypse were 
rolled up into a single verse. 

Let no one destroy your individuality. Christ does 
not do that. He takes you, He lives in you, He uses 
you. The botanist grafts twenty varieties on to the 
rose-bush, but each rose is itself. Paul, Peter, John, 
are all different and distinct. 

Jesus was a sower; the field in which He sowed 
was time, the ages. 

Jesus Christ while on earth, so far as we know, 
came into contact with no supremely great men. But 
what of this? This is no derogation. For since His 
ascension He has by the Gospel been triumphantly 
tested and measured with the great of all time. For 
twenty centuries He has been put into comparison 
and contrasted with the great in human history, with 
genius at its best; with character at its purest; with 
personality at its highest, and with this result, that the 
comparison and contrast have in no way destroyed 
the supremacy of the Master. They have enhanced 
it. As the Christ of history He is what He is as the 
Christ of the Epistles and the four Gospels; He is 
Lord and Master of all. Genius kneels to Him and 
the holiest of men worship at His feet. 

If you spend an evening with a man stronger than 
you are, you come away stronger. Hours spent with 
Christ mean wider horizons, clearer intellect, keener 



EELIGION 



17 



vision; we shine with Christ's glory as Moses shone 
with the glory of God. 

Jesus is the equation of God. He is the human 
climax. His is the prismatic life. You know what the 
prism does; it glorifies the sunbeam. It turns it into 
rainbows. He touched life to finer issues. He is 
God's prism; He beautifies the truth. 

Our Christ has taken possession of everything 
great and grand in our age. Rather, I should say, 
He has made that which is great and grand. The 
highest altruism of the world is His, i. e., man living 
for his fellowman. 

The manward side of Christianity stands out in 
beautiful proportions for the world to admire and 
reproduce. Are the moralities of the world brighter 
to-day than ever before? It is because Christianity 
has shaded them with brighter hues. 

Christ is in the front rank everywhere. He leads 
in theology. There is no dispute about that. He 
leads in education. Almost all of the American col- 
leges were founded in His name, Harvard, Yale, 
Bowdoin, Brown, Princeton, Columbia, Ogelthorpe. 
Only a few state universities are exceptions. Christ 
leads in the world of books, He leads in art and 
painting, in the masterpiece of the brush and chisel. 
In music, Christian civilization is the great factor of 
the world's history. 

Christ is full of fine appreciations; there is tonic 
and strength in His example; He has recreated many 
a soul. 



18 A BOOK OF BEMEMBKANCE 



We see different grand glories in the Master 
through different media. His prayers, His parables, 
His beatitudes, His conversations, all shine with wis- 
dom. Different things in Him, all structural, give 
different glories when the New Testament changes 
the focus of vision, and uses the facet of the Cross. 
It is the humming-bird changing its resplendent throat 
from blue to bright crimson. The glory of the Mas- 
ter's love shines forth, woos and wins and captures 
us and controls our admiration and our devotion. 

A reading of the wonderful Marcus Aurelius for- 
tifies one, but it does not console; the reading of the 
Gospel of Jesus both fortifies and consoles. We need 
to be both fortified and consoled. 

The little child was asked, " Do you want to be 
like Jesus ? " He replied, " I want to be like 
Mamma." Blessed is the mother who becomes the 
vision splendid to her child. 

Gounod had painted on his piano the head of the 
Master. " Before I begin to compose," he said, " I 
look upon that face, and His spirit possesses me." 

The vision of God leaves its stirring, its stirring 
memories behind. Character is caught, not taught. 
The man who lives in the society of the highest 
catches its culture. It is a transforming power. 
They who behold Christ admiringly have Christ 
formed within them. 

If your religion does not change you, then you had 
better change your religion. 

Christ can use us as the artist uses the canvas. 



KELIGION 



19 



The result of the canvas is with the artist. You 
know the starting point and you know the ending. 
It is this, a piece of cloth the starting point, a Mes- 
sonier the ending point. A piece of cloth, a Millais. 
Saul, the persecutor, Paul, the chief of the Apostles. 

The child's question, " Mamma, is Jesus like any- 
body I know ? " There ought to be men and women 
in every part of Christendom who are exponents, 
symbols, likenesses of Jesus Christ. Francis of 
Assisi was said to be more like Him than any one 
since His day. It would take the best part of a 
thousand carefully selected Christians to make a 
Jesus of Nazareth. 

The difference between our relations to Christ and 
all other relations is we outgrow all other relations. 

To believe in Christ is salvation. 
To walk in Christ is holiness. 
To die in Christ is victory. 

The manifold Christ is the living bridge that spans 
the unfathomable gulf between God and man. 

What outlooks and prospects we have in Christ. 
The Master is an inspiration undying. He inspired 
Stephen's death. He gave him his dying. In this 
item of death Stephen was Jesus over again. He 
died forgiving his enemies, and he died committing 
his spirit into safe hands. 

Christ's teachings have lent thrill to Handel's 
music, and beauty to Raphael's canvas, and majesty 
and massiveness to Angelo's cathedrals and inspired 
the songs of genius. 



20 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



Renan, whose prose is said to be sweeter than the 
poetry of most poets, whose style is perfect music, 
whose words drop from his pen as pearls from a 
casket, and whose polished sentences are like the 
facets of a diamond, eulogizes Jesus thus: " What- 
ever be the surprises of the future, Jesus will never 
be surpassed. His worship will go on without ceas- 
ing; His legend will call forth tears without end; 
His sufferings will melt the noblest hearts. All ages 
will proclaim that among the sons of men there is no 
greater than Jesus.' , 

Jesus emphasizes the laws of God. 
He based Himself on experience. He believed in 
prayer. 

The world needs a heightened emphasis on Jesus. 
Carlyle's name for Luther was "A great son of 
Fact " ; Jesus was the " Son of Fact." 

Christianity is not so much a philosophy as it is a 
loyalty to a life — the life which was manifested in 
Christ. 

The early Quakers taught that in every human 
being is a seed of Christ, which under proper culti- 
vation will blossom and bear fruit. This was their 
doctrine of total depravity. Believe it for your com- 
fort and inspiration. 

The Christ that contradicts the highest instincts of 
our nature at their best is not the true Christ. 

Augustine says : " What is called the Christian re- 
ligion has existed among the ancients; and was not 
absent from the beginning of the human race until 



EELIGION 



21 



Christ came, from which time the true religion which 
existed already began to be called Christianity." 

The Master Himself looked forward to His death 
for the most far-reaching and compelling results. 
He was always anticipating it, and preparing His 
disciples for it before it came; the Cross was the di- 
vine event towards which His whole life moved. He 
came to give His life a ransom for many. It was to 
attract all men to Him. Hence, the prominence His 
death has in the Gospel story. All of the Evangelists 
record the passion. Almost one-third of Matthew's 
Gospel, almost two-fifths of Mark's, one-fourth of 
Luke's, well-nigh one-half of John's is taken up with 
the events of the one week of the end of His life. Of 
twenty-one chapters nine are taken up with the last 
twenty-four hours of His wonderful life. Only two 
of the Evangelists tell the story of His birth; two of 
His temptations ; only two recount the Sermon on the 
Mount; but every one of them enlarges on the 
tragedy of His death. The way they describe it is 
striking. There is no comment, there are few adjec- 
tives, no purple patches. 

Jesus rarely uses polysyllables. The great writers 
of the world are simple. Deep water is clear, only 
puddles are muddy. " I am the Bread of Life." He 
nowhere calls Himself the wine of life. He is not a 
stimulant, He is a staple. He is fundamental. 
Marvellous man, this Man of Nazareth ! He staggers 
me by His assumptions. They are so daring. His 
" I ams." Some are willing to surrender all that they 
may be considered modern. They give up the his- 
torical. They assure us that our faith is secure even 
if there are no facts to secure it or confirm it. That 



22 A BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE 



Christ is simply a name for a religious experience; 
that Christ did not make Christian faith; Christian 
faith made Christ ; the critics would make Cod a dead 
name. Maurice once said, with a touch of irony, 
speaking of Carlyle, that he, Carlyle, believed in a 
God who lived until the death of Oliver Cromwell. 
No, He is to-day a living power. The Christian 
Church is built on Christ's resurrection. Oh, we can- 
not dismiss this man Jesus! 

Christ chose preaching as a means of reaching uni- 
versal dominion for the truth. Our Lord used every 
art of speech to make His message known. He used 
the street story to reach the hearts and minds of men. 

" Son of Man." This title is applied by Jesus to 
Himself about half a hundred times in the New 
Testament. This is not accidental. His life is a 
perpetual school for all ages. 

The Apostle to whom Jesus committed the care of 
His mother does not mention her in his memorial of 
the Master. Bushnell says : " The divine wisdom 
somehow took her aside with a set purpose not to let 
her mix her human story products, beautiful and 
graceful as they were, with Christ's immortal life 
word from above." 

Our philosophers have become pragmatic in their 
reasoning. They ask for results. What has Christ 
done to enrich the world? What is He of a prac- 
tical force? What is Calvinism? What has come 
out of the movement? Christianity has nothing to 
lose by comparison, or by being treated practically. 
When this comparative work is done, the grandeur, 



EELIGION 



23 



the beauty, and the force of the Christian religion 
will stand out. As one ascends the mountains of 
Switzerland, the higher one rises the higher Mont 
Blanc appears, and so it is with Christianity com- 
pared with the ethnic religions. 

Christ's tenth legion. It enrolls the highest names 
of history, the transformed Augustine, the golden- 
mouthed Chrysostom, the self-sacrificing Francis of 
Assisi, the good and terse John Bunyan, the stern 
and strong Oliver Cromwell, Baxter, Thomas Chal- 
mers, Frederick Maurice, F. W. Robertson, and 
myriad others. 

Christ is the fulfillment of everything we find in 
our nature. In Him we are complete. 

Make Jesus Christ your passion. May we make 
our plans for life while we are in our Pentecostal 
moods, and during our luminous hours. 

The Master is set forth by characterization rather 
than by narrative. This is the way Bushnell sets Him 
forth. His personal traits are made to shine. 

THE BIBLE. 

Make the word of God living and active to-day in 
our midst. To read the Bible — may it be to read 
oneself? The Book is a reader of men. It is quick 
to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart. It 
pierces to the very center of man's inner life. 



We all bring a great part of what we find in the 
Bible to the Bible. We find in it what we go to find, 



24 



A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



The peculiarity of the Bible is that you read things 
into it, quite as much as you read things out of it. 

The Book of Psalms — a book that begins with a 
benediction and ends with a Hallelujah. 

Westcott says : " It does not appear that any special 
care was taken in the first ages to preserve the Books 
of the New Testament from the various injuries of 
time or to insure perfect accuracy of transcription. 
They were given as a heritage to man, but it was some 
time before man felt the full value of the gift. The 
original copies soon disappeared. The canon was not 
settled until about the year 550 a. d. Prior to that 
people chose and judged for themselves. The New 
Testament was rather tumbled into the world than 
edited.' , 

Make a sifted use of the Old Testament. 
This is what Jesus did. He discriminated. 

There are great texts — utterances of the Master — 
which if you learn and fathom and respond to with 
the fervor and faith of your being, will make you 
Christlike, yea, a second Christ in the world of man- 
kind. 

Homer is a book of life; so is the Bible. 

The humming-bird a fairy in feathers. Exquisite 
creature ! The incarnation of beauty. The male bird 
is arrayed in gorgeous colors; sometimes it is the 
throat that is luminous; in other species a halo of 
radiance is on the crown; in others the tail is bril- 
liant. One kind of humming-bird changes its throat 
instantly from vivid fire-color to light green; another 



RELIGION 



25 



from bright crimson to blue; this alteration is made 
possible by the fact that the hues of these feathered 
jewels are attributable not to pigments, but to struc- 
ture. Each feather has a myriad of facets so placed 
as to present many angles to the light, hence the pe- 
culiar rainbow effect. It is the light that is the 
beauty. Sunshine is specialized light. Change the 
angles of the facets and so change the colors. The 
New Testament is the humming-bird of variegated 
beauty. When it uses the facet of the Sermon on 
the Mount to show the glory of the Master, what a 
flood of splendor there is! How the different angles 
of the Beatitudes glow and corruscate and pour 
forth the brilliance of His matchless wisdom! 

A profound German thinker gives it as his judg- 
ment that in no book are there to be found such revo- 
lutionary utterances as in the Gospel. Yes, the Gos- 
pel is radical. It searches to the root of things. 
Things in their simplicity, relations in their purity, 
ideas in their transcendency, powers in their spring, 
these are the things the Saviour deals with. All 
shows and shams are easily pierced through by the 
keen shafts of His words. The light floods all the 
air while He is speaking. Surroundings and circum- 
stances become nothing; the essential thing, the spirit, 
becomes all in all. 

Doxologies follow visions, and visions come from 
holy contemplation and withdrawal from the world, 
and the cultivation of the Pentecostal mood. It was 
when John was withdrawn from the world in the se- 
clusion and isolation of the Isle of Patmos and was 
in the spirit on the Lord's Day that he had his apoca- 



26 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANOE 



lyptic vision which not only thrilled him but which 
has thrilled all Christendom as well. His book is 
rilled with doxologies, and these doxologies almost al- 
ways follow visions. Example, Rev. 5: 12. 

Christ was the author of historical Christianity. 
Paul was the author of applied Christianity. He 
wrote some of the great chapters of the Book. He 
offered some of the great prayers of the Book. He 
planted some of the greatest churches of the Book. 
He lived one of the greatest and most triumphant 
lives of the Book. Do you wish to be a duplex? 

The Book of Genesis. Its object is purely reli- 
gious, the point being, not how certain things are 
made, but that God made them. It is not dedicated 
to science, but to the soul. 

" Without the Bible it is impossible to understand 
the literature of the English language from Chaucer 
to Browning " (Nicholas Murray Butler). English 
literature covers a period of full twelve hundred 
years. The English are people of a book. 

The influence of the Bible is the language, style, 
and expression of a man. Its simplicity, originality, 
directness, and strength tell. It is a model of pure, 
strong, straightforward speech. True and simple 
diction has an ethical force. Its language dignifies 
and moralizes men. It is a standard of speech. It 
transforms and energizes. It creates spiritual life or 
genius. 

Characteristics of Bible style are simplicity, direct- 
ness, concreteness, picturesqueness, dignity, stateli- 
ness, grandeur, elevation and a noble naturalness. 



EELIGION 



27 



Fellowship with God made Moses sublimely mag- 
nificent. He is the great shining pictorial person- 
ality of the Old Testament. He is the inspiration of 
his fellowmen. He sees visions for them. He sets 
things into clear air. He shows the divine side of 
things. 

Jerusalem, a city full of charm and mystery and 
beauty, and romance and pathos, and undying sanc- 
tity that appeals to one's heart. It has multitudes of 
sacred sites. Canon Farrar says : " There is only one 
guide book for Jerusalem and that is the Bible." 

The Bible is not a book. It is a whole library. 
Literature exists to refresh the weary; to console the 
sad; to enliven the dull and downcast; to increase 
man's interest in the world ; and his joy in living and 
his sympathy with all sorts of men. 

The story of the Prodigal Son is the limit of reve- 
lation. 

The eleventh chapter of the Hebrews was picked 
out of the Old Testament. We must people our 
hours with lovely presences which refine. Joshua 
must live with Moses, Elisha with Elijah, Ruth with 
Naomi, Timothy with Paul. 

We have nothing to fear from the explorations of 
the convents of Thibet. Max Muller, than whom 
there is no better authority on orientalism, says in the 
introduction of his translation of " The Sacred Book 
of the East " : " It is sheer futility to assume that the 
Bible is ever to be dazzled by any other sacred book." 

When I used to come across a stray gem of 



28 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKAtfCE 



thought said to be taken from the sacred Books of 
the Orient this apprehension flashed through my 
mind; there may be more gems of equal value where 
this came from. When the Sacred Books of the 
Orient are possessed by the world in all their fullness 
and beautifully translated, the Bible may have all it 
can do to hold its own. Well, we have these Sacred 
Books at last, they are all on the shelves of the Bos- 
ton Library and within reach of every hand that wills 
to handle them. And what is the result? This. 
When carefully searched through, it is found there is 
only at best one grain of wheat in them to every 
bushel of chaff. 

The people of the Bible are the very substance of 
which our souls are fashioned. 

BIBLE HELPS. 

When in sorrow read John 14. 
When men fail you read Psalm 27. 
When you have sinned read Psalm 51. 
When you worry read Matthew 6: 19-24. 
Before Church Service read Psalm 84. 
When you are in danger read Psalm 91. 
When you have the blues read Psalm 34. 
When God seems far away read Psalm 139. 
When you are discouraged read Isaiah 60. 
If you want to be fruitful read John 15. 
When doubts come upon you read John 7: 17. 
When lonely or fearful read Psalm 23. 
When you forget your blessings read Psalm 103. 
For Jesus' idea of a Christian read Matthew 5. 
For Jesus' idea of religion read James 1: 19-27. 
When faith needs stirring read Hebrews 11. 



RELIGION 



29 



When you feel down and out read Romans 
8:31-39. 

When you want courage for your work read 
Joshua 1. 

When the world seems bigger than God read Psalm 
90. 

When you want rest and peace read Matthew 
11: 25-30. 

When you want Christian assurance read Romans 
8: 1-30. 

For Paul's secret of happiness read Colossians 
3:12-17. 

When you leave home read Psalm 121. 
When you grow bitter or critical read 1 Corin- 
thians 13. 

When your prayers grow narrow and selfish read 
Psalm 67. 

For Paul's idea of Christianity read 2 Corinthians 
5:15-19. 

When you think of investments and fortune read 
Mark 10: 17-33. 

For a great invitation and opportunity read Isaiah 
55. 

For Jesus' idea of prayer read Luke 1: 1-13, 
Matthew 6: 5-15. 

For the prophet's picture of worship that counts 
read Isaiah 58: 1-12. 

For the prophet's idea of religion read Isaiah 
1: 10-18, Micah 6: 6-8. 

THE CHURCH. 

Public prayer should reform and refresh and re- 
vive the ideals of the people and give them a purified 
and vitalized Christian life and character. 



30 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANOE 



A man may become so earnest that he feels he is 
uttering divine thought. 

Very few of us have any adequate conception of 
the power of a pure and loyal church. It marches to 
the music of " Coronation." It carries every good 
cause to triumph. 

Our comradeship in Christ. In this we have the 
church universal. By Christ we are linked together. 
By it we win men to the championship of His pur- 
pose, to the coming of His kingdom which shall eman- 
cipate the world from evil. It is a refuge; it is an 
inspiration; it is a brotherhood. Our hymn-books are 
filled with songs that have come out of the heart of 
Roman, Greek, Anglican, Presbyterian, Wesleyan, 
Congregationalist, Lutheran, and American Chris- 
tians. We have a large fellowship in the prayer- 
books of the churches, made meet for the habitations 
of the saints in light. 

Help us to partake of the faith of Jesus in the 
worth of man. There is in a sermon the potency of 
an Isaiah, a Plato, a Paul, a Dante, a Shakespeare. 

Inside the cathedral! The silence! Sublime 
spaces, arches, pillars, the whole edifice is instinct 
with life. Human wealth of intellect is married to 
celestial grandeurs. 

A beautiful soul is a religion in itself. It is a bell 
calling men to worship. The church should be a 
brotherhood of bells, a set of consecrated chimes of 
God, filling the air with praises, creating an atmos- 
phere of worship. 



KELIGION 



31 



The ideal relative to the church is different to-day 
from what it was in former days. A man in former 
days asked, " How can I serve the church ? " and he 
joined the church, as the patriot joins the National 
Army, for service. To-day a man asks, " How can 
the church serve me?" and he joins the church for 
profit, for what he can get out of it. We have 
largely lost the old ideal of devotion to the church. 
Catholics hold on to this ideal far better than Protes- 
tants do. They lead us just here. My point is this. If 
the church to-day is to meet this prevalent and mod- 
ern ideal of service it must have a larger equipment 
than the church of the former days had. It must 
have a larger corps of workers; it must have more 
buildings. 

Even the silence of God's house is a .companion- 
able silence. 

MINISTERS. 

May our ministers all the time feel the tug of their 
people's needs, and the world's need of sympathy and 
inspiration and courage and cheer. 

The text is a pin-point hole through which we may 
behold a panorama. 

A rare art is the ability to preach in pictures. A 
great preacher's style has the poise and the clarity of 
Greek sculpture. 

Some men's sermons have spiritual power al- 
though they have not in them many brilliant sentences 
nor many purple patches. Men travel long distances 
to hear them pray. In their prayers they neither in- 



32 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



suit the Deity with intrusive eloquence, nor assail 
Him with paradox. They talk with God. 

There is a " Nevertheless " that always qualifies a 
brave soul's prayer. 

A man who can so speak to his fellowmen as to 
make them feel that God is speaking to them is a 
voice of God. 

We must keep in unimpeded contact with God ; this 
should be our master passion in life. 

There are some great texts of the Master, the utter- 
ances, which if you learn and fathom and respond to 
with all the faith of your being, will make you live 
well and preach well. Put those at the very start into 
your mind and heart and education and life. 

Moral impulse always makes an orator. 

Some preachers deal too much in coffin nails. 

Let the congregation hold the stop watch. 

The Gospel is put into moving forms; into words, 
songs, symbols, paintings, windows, characters, life. 

Thomas Guthrie said that in preaching he aimed at 
three things: 

(a) To prove. 

(b) To paint. 

(c) To persuade. 

His painting with the tongue was as vivid as Rem- 
brandt's painting with the brush. 

On the minister's lip eternity is burned with a live 
coal from the altar. 



EELIGION 



33 



A sacramental character belongs to all true preach- 
ing. It is an essential. 

He is a scientist who explores the human spirit as 
well as he who explores the physical universe, a study 
of the soul inspiring optimism. 

Dr. W. N. Clarke uses the literature of biography 
and works up a fine lecture. He uses Huxley, the 
scientist, and Phillips Brooks, the theologian. This 
production carries in it a world of interest. It is 
unique. It is up-to-date, and out of the ordinary. 
It institutes an investigation of vital importance. It 
is an appeal to thinkers. Study it in full and get 
from it a new type of sermon. 

Coin rare thoughts into rare words. 

Illustrations fresh, apt, timely, natural, facile, form 
an element of style that may be called " its vital Ex- 
pression." 

As the painter in his picture, so the preacher in his 
sermon aims at producing a fine atmosphere, electric, 
vital, stimulating. 

Demosthenes* canon is this: — "Every speech ought 
to begin with an uncontrovertible proposition." 

Literature is an aid to the sermon; it contributes 
variety, beauty, life, and power. 

A good preacher knows the things to omit. 

The sermon is the greatest and vastest thing in the 
universe of letters. It is in itself a world of litera- 
ture, and is all inclusive. The universe belongs to it, 



34 A BOOK OF KEMEMBEANCE 



and is serviceable. It should be so used as to give it 
beauty, variety, conquering power, life, grandeur, 
thrills, influence, and immortality. The sermon may 
have the variety, and power, and life that the Bible 
has. I want to magnify the sermon, reinforce the 
pulpit by all the poets, artists, journalists, novelists, 
and orators of the age. Let Lowell, and Bryant, and 
Holmes, and Longfellow, and Emerson, lend the 
magic of their verse. Let the pulpit be honored by 
being the medium of their genius. Turn religion 
into literature and literature into religion. 

Learn to use the exclamation. Interlard the ser- 
mon with it. It wakens an audience. It is con- 
clusive. It is an appeal. It is a vision. 

Preaching is not talking. It is a sacramental act. 
God, through the spoken word, is brought into sacra- 
mental union with the hearer. A deed is done. 

What is the principle of inclusion in a sermon? 
Everything is legitimate that instructs, brightens, 
emphasizes, beautifies, enriches, and gives power and 
freshness. 

The rhetorical pause. You know what it is to 
come to such a pause in the music of some great com- 
poser. Some symphony of Beethoven, or some ora- 
torio of Handel. At a given signal from the con- 
ductor there is a sudden silence over the vast orches- 
tra that may be felt. Every violin has ceased to 
throb, every cornet has ceased to sound. After a 
breathless moment of expectancy the conductor lets 
his baton fall; then in a twinkle every instrument 
takes up the strain again, violin, cornet, organ, drum, 



EELIGION 



35 



cymbal, all, until in a perfect blaze of music the com- 
position reaches its close. The pause was a prelude 
to the climax. 

Fortify your idea by ancient lore. Put back of it 
the minds of great thinkers, make it musical by a line 
or two of poetry, show a parallel teaching in nature 
by the aid of the scientist, illustrate it by some great 
picture on the easel, clarify it by the thinking of 
Greek philosophy, give it a personification, an incar- 
nation by introducing some interesting, historical 
character, make the drama illustrate and sustain it, 
make it a classic by rallying the classics around it. 

The text must select you. The world needs mas- 
terpieces; it has time only for these. Give it these. 
Hold them up. Make them a power among the peo- 
ple. Read for the people. Think for the people. 
Instruct the people. Introduce the people to the best. 
Stimulate the people. Inspire the people. Make the 
people. Give the people the re-birth. Why should not 
the pulpit do all this? We have the right to assess, 
use and utilize everything that will help us in our su- 
preme purpose. 

St. Pierre read his " Paul and Virginia " in 
Madame Necker's salon before a distinguished audi- 
ence, and incredible as it may seem his masterpiece 
was not appreciated. They yawned and whispered. 
Not a word of praise. (Moral: — The audience may 
be in fault. Here the audience was a failure.) It 
was " Paul and Virginia " that gave him his fame. 
It appeared 1788. It was translated into many 
languages. 



36 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



Our audiences act on our minds. Dull faces with- 
out a ray of sympathy or a movement of expression, 
negative faces, — they kill a speaker. 

Of F. W. Robertson, Sir Robertson Nicol writes: 
" I have been more than ever struck with his severe 
intellectual life and his really wonderful style. Rob- 
ertson writing autobiographically of himself says: 
" I have read hard, never skimming. Plato and Aris- 
totle and Butler and Sterne and Thucydides and 
Jonathan Edwards have passed like iron atoms into 
the blood of my mental constitution." He gave more 
than he took. His intellectual and spiritual outpour- 
ing was prodigious. To Robertson preaching was a 
desperate life-and-death affair. He wrote out his 
sermons for his friends just after he had delivered 
them. He was of pure Scotch blood. His father and 
his mother both belonged to old and famous Scotch 
families. 

The incoming of God into men's lives. He comes 
in two ways: 

1. In the form of great truths, principles, and 
purposes. 

2. Through great fellowship with great lives. 

There are sermons which have millstones about 
their necks. 

Good sermons are not constructed, they are 
evolved. 

Years ago the novel was regarded as dangerous 
to spiritual life. The novel and the theatre were 
classed together. Now both have recognition as pub- 
lic benefactors and reformers. 



EELIGION 



37 



Look after your thought, harmony, finish and 
adornment, unity, proportion and quality. 

The writer or speaker appeals to the understand- 
ing, the emotions, the imagination. 

Don't leave your audience bored. Leave it in an 
elevated mood. 

To think sharply and lucidly is the result of self- 
discipline. 

Use the language of those addressed, if you would 
be clear. 

The best instructor is not he who knows the most, 
but he who imparts the most. 

Write and speak so that you cannot be misunder- 
stood. 

Create the impression of reserve force. You could 
do more, if you only wished. You have not ex- 
hausted yourself. 

Vehemence is not vigor. 
Begin well and end well. 

Keep within the experience of your audience. 
" Elegance " is that in style which pleases the taste, 
which gives delight to the workmanship. It charms. 
Emotional words, color, persistence; persistence, — 
that is your motto. 

The object in using figures in writing or speaking 
is to give clearness, or force, or elegance to the idea 
presented. 



38 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



There are enough figures in the Book of Job to 
teach the art of using figures. " Man is born into 
trouble, as the sparks fly upwards." " He maketh the 
deep to boil like a pot." " Thou shalt come to thy 
grave in a full age, like a shock of corn cometh in his 
season." 

Repetitions cleverly used are not defects but beau- 
ties. 

Dullness is the unpardonable sin. 

The essential thing is to convince. 

Make the people coax you to speak on. Pique 
their curiosity. Make them responsible for your ser- 
mon. 

Dr. Dods in one of his lectures tells the story of 
Plutarch, that Caius Gracchus, who was frequently 
carried away by passion when speaking in public, 
kept a well-educated slave at his back, who as often 
as the orator's voice became shrill and discordant, 
sounded a soft sweet note on his flute, and so restored 
his master to the proper pitch. 

By anticipation listen for your audience. This will 
save them from wear and tear. It will put clearness 
and brevity into your speech. 

Use biography; this wheels into line men and 
events. 

" The power of the pulpit is this: it is truth passing 
through personality" (Phillips Brooks). 



EELIGION 



39 



A creed does not mean limitation but concentra- 
tion. 

A wide-awake preacher is always on the lookout 
for a live line, a suggestive fact, a useful analogy, an 
incident illustrating a principle, a verbal felicity, a 
fresh point of view. After delivering an extempo- 
rary oration of singular beauty and effectiveness, 
Wendell Phillips explained to a friend who asked him 
how he could do it, " I was forty years at work on 
that address." A small vial of rich perfume contains 
the essence of a thousand roses. A telling sermon is 
generally the distillation of a thousand observations, 
broodings and experiments. 

The pew has a part in the making of a sermon. 

There is nothing that takes the place of being in- 
teresting in the pulpit. It is pulpit power. Aim at 
being interesting. Charles Lamb says: "It is as good 
as aiming at being dull." 

In preaching, the secret of interest is experience, 
also reality. The objective is testimony, education, 
and appeal. Give the things you know at first hand. 
Self-respecting laymen have their rights. Truth 
must be personal, a glowing enthusiasm, an intense 
reality. Truth passes from experience to dogma and 
then back to formula. The key to unreality in re- 
ligion is its divorce from experience. The Rabbis 
talked law. Jesus came and talked to the people 
about birds and lilies, about ploughs and loaves and 
fishes. He connected religion with these things. 
This is what made the Rabbis so angry with Him. 
But the common people heard Him gladly. Jesus 



40 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



sought for common ground with His hearers, and so 
did His Apostles. Beecher says that forty times in 
the record of the Apostles' propaganda the phrase 
" you all know " is used. 

The frozen ritualism of the Church must give way 
to personal and impromptu prayer and adoration. 

The preacher's main instrument is to be his own 
personality. There must be self-denying study. 
Avoid spiritual idleness. There are some texts that 
must be awfully tired; give them a rest. 

The dignified aloofness of some preachers is the 
worst enemy of their effectiveness. 

God uses regular means of imparting His message 
to ministers, — experience, study, vision. 

Make Christ your passion. The outgo of Christ 
from us will be equal to the income of Christ into 
us. 

Be yourself, your best self. Look after your re- 
ceptivity. May the congregation go forth from each 
service exhilarated, with great purposes beating in 
their hearts. 

LITTLE SERMONS. 

Give us to see the rainbow on every cloud of sor- 
row. Keep us in touch with great personalities, edu- 
cate us in our responsibilities. The touch divine of 
noble natures assimilates. Our soul friends regale 
our souls. A holy man is more than a man, he is 
an epoch, he is a golden age. We want in our Church 
and in our nation public souls. Beautiful souls make 



EELIGION 



41 



the world beautiful. The personality of a true Christ 
man is a gem into which God can pour the Gospel and 
get it back in flashing colors that charm and thrill. 

The Scribes came to Jesus tempting Him with the 
purpose to entrap Him and they put to Him this puz- 
zling question — " Which is the first commandment of 
all?" i. e.y which is the great commandment? The 
question really inaugurates a contest between the 
wisdom of the Master and the wisdom of the wise 
of all ages. Jesus is pitted against the masters of 
Israel, who had made the law their life study, and 
who knew every jot and tittle and pen-point thereof. 
Some one has said lately — " Jesus while on earth 
came into contact with none of the great minds of 
the ages ; therefore it was that He had His own way." 
The saying is a mistake. He came into contact with 
all of the great minds. He had His own way because 
His way was the best. He was preeminent because 
He outrivalled all competitors. His enemies used all 
the great men of Israel, from Abraham and Moses 
down to the last prophet that they might floor Him 
before the people and thus minimize and neutralize 
His influence. This question " Which is the first 
commandment of all ? " precipitated a contest be- 
tween Him and the Scribes and the jurists and 
casuists and the masters of Israel. When He gave 
His answer, not a man from all the teachers of the 
ages could be brought forward to match Him or to 
gainsay Him. " And Jesus answered them the first 
of all the commandments is — Thou shalt love the 
Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul 
and with all thy mind ; this is the first and great com- 
mandment and the second is like unto it. Thou shalt 



42 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBAM3E 



love thy neighbor, as thyself." There is no other 
commandment greater than these. The question of 
the Scribes set Jesus at work on the Old Testament. 
This was His Bible and He did great work here. He 
evolved the Sermon on the Mount from the Old Tes- 
tament. This sermon is truth's greatest manifesto. 
He evolved His Messiahship from it (Luke 
24: 44-47). My fellowmen, we have a fine piece of 
scripture exegesis here. We have a rereading of the 
law, and this rereading brings out the depth of mean- 
ing contained in the law. It spiritualizes it. The 
law becomes spirit and life. The word is made flesh. 
This is a magnificent definition. This is condensa- 
tion. This is superb summarizing. The great leader 
excelled in the art of epitome. He knew how to focus 
things. He put great facts into single words, single 
verses, single parables. He focalized prayer and gave 
His disciples that brief form called " The Lord's 
Prayer." He focalized the whole of redemption and 
gave literature the greatest verse in the Bible ("For 
God so loved the world that He gave His only be- 
gotten Son that whosoever believeth on Him should 
not perish but have everlasting life"). He gave the 
world a golden rule. He focalized the whole of God 
in one phrase " The Father." He is just the one to 
epitomize the law. He does this in the one word, 
" Love." 

Symbols are educational. The Old Testament 
Tabernacle is a proof and illustration of this. It in- 
doctrinated believers of old in the great realities of 
the true religion. This was its God-given mission. 
The building was a series of symbols which pictured 
spiritual facts; and a series of types which predicted 



EELIGION 



43 



coming spiritual blessings. Its compartments and 
articles of furniture were sermons from the loom, 
and the needle and the carpenter's bench, and the 
chisel of the artificer. The Tabernacle was a voice 
in the midst of Israel and taught by models and dia- 
grams and the spectacular. It was a pictorial Gos- 
pel. It was the believer's Bible. Its sacrifices and 
altars were object lessons and the acts prescribed by 
its ritual were holy doctrines. The gleam of gold 
and the glow of color and the wreath of incense and 
the smoke of sacrifice, and the outflowing of His 
glory-cloud, were vocal and instructive. They talked 
moral and spiritual principles, built up character, de- 
veloped reverence, and acted as mediums of fellow- 
ship between God and man. 

These talking symbols are like the alphabet. The 
alphabet is the greatest invention that was ever made 
— the marking down of unseen thoughts by written 
characters. It is a kind of second speech. Speech is 
a miracle. Poetry is the music of human speech. 

Life has the power of rising above its environment ; 
of transcending it; of transforming it into something 
better. Look at the flower! It transforms its sur- 
roundings into new beauty. It does not conform, it 
transforms. Look at the rose, the queen of flowers! 
Planted in the common soil, yet it transmutes this 
soil into rich lines and sweet fragrance that are the 
wonder and delight of the world. It is not the slave 
of the dust, but its master. 

Napoleon the First said : " Madame de Stael is a 
fine conversationalist. She is a whirlwind in petti- 
coats." She made a visit to a lady of distinction. 



44 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



The lady never got a chance to put in one word dur- 
ing the two hours. At the close Madame de Stael 
exclaimed, " What a delightful conversation we have 
had ! " Many good people think that our speaking to 
God is the only element in communion with God. 
Read Thomas a Kempis' " Imitation of Christ " and 
be instructed. Let the word speak to you; in com- 
munion God speaks to us. 

Stay persistently in the presence of the best; and 
the best will take care of itself. Hear persistently 
the best music; see persistently the best in art; read 
persistently the best in literature; stay persistently 
with the best characters. This is the very essence of 
the growth in life. 

The combination of men produce results. Sir 
Francis Galton says: "There were fourteen men in 
Greece in the time of Pericles who made Athens pos- 
sible.' ' Praxiteles alone could have done nothing. 
Ictinus might have drawn the plans of the Parthenon, 
but without Pericles the noble building would have 
remained the stuff which dreams are made of. They 
say that without Aspasia Pericles would have been a 
mere dreamer of dreams. You must let others en- 
rich you. Have contact with your fellowmen. 

Communion with God gave Moses facial beauty. 
His very body was a partaker of his transfiguration. 
This is according to the operation of the course of 
nature. Our thoughts and loves are chisels working 
upon our faces. Elevated thoughts remove the lines 
of sensuality and replace them by the fineness of a 
lofty self-control. There is not a virtue that will not 
refine and leave a new fineness and fairness upon the 



EELIGION 



45 



features.. Keep holy the emotions; think exaltedly; 
feel deeply and purely ; live continently and the divin- 
ity within will shape the divinity without. The soul is 
the cardinal beautified. The greatest chemical agency 
is holy love. It celestializes the face. Look after 
the raptures to which you yield yourselves! The 
thoughts you think, the intuitions you trust, the prin- 
ciples you hold, the purposes you cherish, the loves 
you allow, the dictates of your conscience, the voli- 
tions of your will; if these be Godlike, they will make 
you Godlike. 

We have fallen upon pessimistic times. A mood 
of weariness has come over the thought of the world. 
Hear the pessimist! " Man has had his day. Life is 
played out. All the great songs have been sung, and 
the great poems written, and the great oratorios com- 
posed, and the immortal pictures painted, and the op- 
portunities for heroism have been exhausted.' , I do 
not believe it. The autumn is just as rich in fruit as 
when the earth was young; and the springtide just as 
beautiful with flowers. Love to-day awakes at a 
smile and rises into power as though each young man 
and young woman were the original pair. Little chil- 
dren are still happy. Nature is still full of secrets. 
All the seasons are still young. True religion is still 
strong, and Jesus Christ is still young. My fellow- 
men, it is more important than ever to believe that the 
golden age is still in the future. 

Balzac in his pathetic story, " The Atheist's Mass," 
tells of one who was the ablest and most successful 
physician in Paris, admired by scientists and the 
fashionable people alike. He had come to Paris a 



46 A BOOK OF BEMEMBKANCE 



poor lad, and when at the point of utter destitution he 
was befriended by a man in a very humble position, 
who gave up his savings and modest ambitions and 
devoted himself and all his savings to enable the lad 
to pass his examinations ; and then when the goal was 
reached, when the tide was at the turn, the man died, 
having sacrificed himself for another. Atheism was 
the fashionable creed in Paris, and, of course, the 
brilliant surgeon and professor was an Atheist. But 
his Atheism had a hard time of it, for the conscious- 
ness of a great unselfish love was surging there like a 
tide through his whole being. Nothing that the years 
brought could drive out the memory of that sacrifice 
made for him. He could not weary of it. It was 
ever fresh. He, and all he was, had literally been 
bought by blood. It haunted him till behind it, and 
above it, he saw another sacrifice and a greater, the 
sacrifice of Jesus Christ, — the Mass set that before 
him. There is a wonderful eloquence in blood. We 
need to see the blood to be won over to Christ, but we 
are won. 

You recall the story which Hawthorne tells relative 
to a certain spot in the New England hills, the story 
of the " Great Stone Face." In the story there is a 
boy named Ernest sitting one evening with his 
mother, and looking at that noble profile. His mother 
told how traditions said that some day there was com- 
ing a man with the same gracious lineaments, a man 
who should in his own character embody those graces 
of personality which gave him a right to such a face, 
which would indeed mold his face into this likeness. 
The mother's story sank deep into the heart of the 
boy and he watched the face as a boy and then as a 



EELIGION 



47 



youth, and then as a middle-aged man, and finally as 
an old man. He was wishing for the coming one and 
was disappointed, yet day after day he was uncon- 
sciously influenced by this stone face outlined against 
the New England sky. He had been dwelling upon 
the beauty of the character possessed by the man who 
was to resemble it. As he thought he faithfully per- 
formed the duties of life. One day a famous poet 
came to see him. They went out together at the set- 
ting of the sun and Ernest, now an old man, ad- 
dressed the people as was his wont upon some simple 
but beautiful theme. As the rays of the sun fell on 
the great stone face, and then on Ernest's face, the 
poet exclaimed, " Why, Ernest himself is like the 
great stone face ! " And he was. Even so uncon- 
sciously the influence of Jesus Christ works in and 
upon the believer as he communes with Christ until 
he is made like the Master. This transfiguration 
goes on until the words of John are realized. " Be- 
hold now are we the Sons of God." 

In the Roman Forum there was a little spring 
called the Virgin Spring, which sang merrily as it 
broke into the light and passed on its way to the yel- 
low Tiber. For centuries it was lost sight of. It 
had not ceased to exist, but it had been clogged and 
covered by tons of rubbish, as the proud city had been 
laid low by the hand of the spoiler. In recent years 
it was rediscovered and opened. It took up the song 
again and recommenced its useful ministry. This 
Virgin Spring is mentioned by the historian Livy. It 
was here in the first and great days of Roman history. 
In exploring they removed the rubbish and now it has 
reemerged and is flowing again and is sparkling in the 



48 A BOOK OF REMEMBEASTCE 



light, admired by all. It is a picture of the way 
Christ is covered in our lives by the rubbish of the 
world. He is crowded back and down. 

In Christ is our defense. In one of the great cities 
of the continent the regalia is not kept behind iron 
bars as in the Tower of London, but lies upon an open 
table. It might appear that any ruthless hand could 
wrench any jewel from the glittering array, and yet 
no man dare put out his hand to take one because that 
table is charged with a strong current of electricity. 
You cannot see the protection, but it is there. So if 
only a man will live in the charged circle of daily and 
hourly communion with Christ, the Devil can no more 
touch him than a thief can touch those jewels. 

The great masters were swayed by great emotions 
as they worked over their masterpieces. When da 
Vinci took up his brush to depict in his famous 
" Lord's Supper " the face of the Lord, his hand 
trembled and he was forced to desist. He was moved 
to reverence. Fra Angelico was inspired by an equal 
reverence although he had long habituated himself to 
the practice of the divine presence. He was even 
sensible that the Jesus of history rose above his lofti- 
est conception as the heavens lift themselves above 
the earth. Was Jesus worthy of all this? There is a 
tradition that when Angelico stood before the freshly 
plastered walls of San Marco he took his brush and 
with many tears and prayers began to paint the dying 
Christ. To the painter-monk the cross denoted sub- 
stitution; Christ died to bring us to God. I want to 
create a right conception and secure a right apprecia- 
tion of these masters of art who consecrated their art 



EELIGION 



49 



to Jesus Christ. We shall then expect more from 
our fellowship with them, and from our study of 
their productions. They are the Priests and Prophets 
of God. Their efforts to visualize the Christ parallels 
the efforts of those who put Christ into words by the 
use of the inspired pen and gave us the Gospels and 
the Epistles and the Apocalypse. 

Some build their lives into words and live in litera- 
ture; some shape themselves into sounds and live in 
the world's songs; some ensphere themselves in art 
and give the world statues and canvases and cathe- 
drals ; so live that your life shall be a glory and your 
death a passing from glory to glory. 

We let off Moses and David and Solomon on a 
heap of things we would not stand for now. The 
world has progressed. 

Ours is a world that pays Socrates with a cup of 
poison, and Christ with a cross. To Byron, Goethe 
gave a place among the foremost. France and Italy 
gave him a praise reserved for Shakespeare alone. 
Men called Byron the handsomest youth of his time. 
His beautiful head, his finely chiselled features, his 
face glowing with feeling, his courtly manners, all 
lent him the note of distinction. He had the beauty 
of a Greek God. Yet he perished ere his race was 
half run. In a reckless, pleasure-loving age, he drank 
more, lived faster, and was more reckless than any 
other man. Sin poisoned his genius. In the begin- 
ning of his career England would have buried Byron 
in Westminster Abbey, but when he died his troubled 
dust was buried in the little churchyard of Hucknall. 
" How are the mighty fallen ! " Poe starved and 



50 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



shivered into the tramp's grave at thirty-nine. Burns 
found the wolf at his door at thirty-seven. The fiend 
was gnawing at the heart-strings of Byron at thirty- 
one. At thirty Shelley passed. Keats died at twen- 
ty-five. Among the artists Andrea del Sarto had 
gifts so great that many believed him to stand supe- 
rior to Raphael himself. His pictures were miracles 
of beauty. He fell under the influence of a beautiful 
Jezebel, left his aged parents to starve, and for gold 
sold his brush to ignoble patrons. He was overtaken 
by a contagious disease and was carried to a pauper's 
grave. Burns clothed drinking songs with matchless 
beauty. Burns' plea is very bold. He affirms that 
greatness sanctifies whatever it does, that genius is 
exempt from moral laws. This plea would make all 
the great men blameless though evil-doers. No, no, 
when God gives youth power and the maiden beauty, 
He takes vows from them. 

Different men have different gifts. One ap- 
proaches truth through a process of reasoning; his 
expression is in logical form. We call that man a 
philosopher or a theologian. Another has a sensitive 
spirit ; to him ideas have the vividness of present real- 
ities. We call him a seer. What one finds as the re- 
sult of long and laborious effort the other sees. The 
Hebrew prophets were seers. They saw truth intui- 
tively and uttered it poetically. Not one of them was 
a theologian. They express truth in picturesque and 
rhythmical forms. Others see truth and express it in 
sweet sounds. A great musician when he wishes to 
pray goes into the dark and silent temple and seating 
himself at the organ lets its majestic tones voice his 
petition and his praise. Some men have been in- 



EELIGION 



51 



spired to preach, like Paul; some to sing, like David; 
and some to paint, like the famous artists. A picture 
may be an expression of a doctrine as truly as a 
Psalm or a sermon. Great souls have found expres- 
sion on canvas, hence our art galleries. The master- 
pieces are symbols and talk. The most beautiful pic- 
ture in the world is the Sistine Madonna at Dresden, 
Saxony. It was painted as an altar-piece for a church 
in Italy. The mother, the ideal woman face, and the 
Child. Kneeling below is St. Sixtus, a perfect pic- 
ture of old age, on the other side St. Barbara, only 
less beautiful than the Virgin. At the bottom of the 
canvas two cherubs. Raphael always idealized when 
he painted. This greatest of all paintings contains 
immortal lessons. Of Mary very little is recorded. 
What should be our attitude towards Mary ? She had 
the greatest honor that ever came to woman — the 
mother of our Lord. 

There are many paintings of the ocean, but paint- 
ings of the great mountains are few. Charles Giron 
holds high place among modern Swiss artists as a 
painter of Alpine scenery. He sets forth nature in 
her grandest mood. The peaks are the home of the 
Gods. Mountains are the backbone of the continents, 
Japan is the empire of mountains (chief there is its 
sacred peak Fujiyama), the Alps, the glory of Europe, 
the Himalayas, the crown of Asia. They are objects 
to be admired. They have a distinct and beneficent 
ministry to perform. They give motion to water. 
^They maintain a constant change in the currents of 
the air. They cause perpetual change in the soils of 
the earth. They minister to the sense of beauty in 
man. The Yosemite as seen from Inspiration Point 



52 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



is a picture sublime. Three natural objects may be 
said to make the beauty and glory of the earth, the 
oceans, the mountains, and the sky. Compare Mont 
Blanc, fifteen thousand six hundred feet, with the 
white splendor of Mt. Ranier, fifteen thousand feet 
in Oregon. They always point men upward. 

It is said of one that he had no art of creating cir- 
cumstances; opportunities must seek him, else he 
would plod through life without disclosing the gifts 
which God hid in him. The gold in the hills cannot 
disclose itself. It must be sought for and dug. 

Men worship success. Robert Browning shows 
the working of this theory in his poem " Bishop 
Blougram's Apology." The story of the poem is 
this: Two young men classmates separated on gradu- 
ation day and went their respective ways. One be- 
came a Bishop. The other reached nothing so far as 
fame went, but he succeeded in keeping his conscience 
true and himself true to it. The two met in later 
years. The Bishop invited his old comrade to dine 
with him. Over the viands he laid before his college 
mate the philosophy of life. Half-wise, half-cynical 
and sneering he pointed out the fact that he had won 
success, fame, money, power, distinction, honor. 
His boast was: " I stand here on the pinnacle of fame, 
but you, poor fellow, when you came to the point 
where the path turned to fame allowed your con- 
science to interfere. ,, In the poem Browning makes 
it clear that at the bottom of his soul the Bishop is an 
utter sceptic. He does not believe in his creed, nor 
in the God he worships by ritual, nor in the heaven 
he seeks to induce men to enter. He does not feel 



EELIGION 



53 



quite sure of anything except that he is Bishop Blou- 
gram. Christ's policy of life was the very opposite of 
that. You remember that on one occasion when He 
spoke the truth, it is recorded, " On that day many 
went back and followed Him no more. ,, He might 
have rationally argued, " I am losing my hold on the 
people; better modify, better cotton a little to the mul- 
titude, for if I keep them I can influence them." But 
Jesus did not argue thus. He kept straight on speak- 
ing the truth. He was left alone. But now His 
martyrdom has crowned Him with undying influence. 

We vulgarize life. We lose our visions. We 
should people our hours with lovely presences that 
refine, inward forces that purify. The intuitions we 
trust, the principles we hold, the purposes we cherish, 
the volitions we will, the dictates of conscience whereby 
we follow the loves we allow to sway us, the visions 
we entertain, for if these are Godlike, they make us 
Godlike. Enthrone God in the soul. Translate the 
eighth chapter of Romans into your life. 

The way to construct a perfect Mosaic is to deal in 
perfect gems of thought, select them, polish them, cut 
them, and then store them away for use. Work and 
construct with masterpieces of others. This will 
familiarize you with the best, tone up your taste, and 
give you high ideals. You can deal with them in 
such a way as to make them your own. They will 
become part of you, second nature, yes, first nature. 
By and by you will be able to build up to their level, 
and to parallel them. The masterpieces of Jesus are 
Mosaics, — the Lord's Prayer, The Beatitudes. 



54 A BOOK OF BEMEMBKANCE 



The truth always receives its highest expression in 
and through a person. This Jesus Christ Himself 
teaches when He says: "I am the truth." Truth in 
life-form is an authority. In this form it commands 
and is obeyed. It is light and it reveals. It makes 
a man luminous. Now a luminous personality is a 
pillar of fire to the Israel of God. A fine personality 
is a Shekinah personality. Such a person was St. 
Columba, the man to whom Northern Britain owes 
its Christianity. They tell this legend of him. He 
wanted to make a copy of the Book of Psalms for his 
own devotional use. The Book was locked away in 
the cathedral. Stealthily Columba made his way into 
the church to the repository of the Psalter. But to 
what purpose? It was pitch dark. Miracle comes 
into the legend here. When the saint opened the 
Psalter and took his pen in hand to write, light 
streamed out of his hand with such radiance that it 
flooded the sacred pages with the brightness of day. 
He had a Shekinah hand, and by that hand he made a 
copy of the Psalter that all who saw coveted. There 
is a truth lurking in this legend, viz., a fine personality 
is a Shekinah personality. The man sees things by 
means of himself, by what he is. His own worth is 
light, so is his own conscience, and so is his own 
imagination, and so are his principles, and so are his 
intuitions, and so are his own experiences. By his 
own life he can make correct and beautiful copies of 
the revelations of God, and have these for his own 
use and for the use of his fellowmen. 

It is said that for the first time have the master- 
pieces of Handel been disclosed as the great musician 
conceived them. They had to wait for our improved 



KELIGION 



55 



instruments of music, and our enlarged appreciation 
and enthusiasm before they could find a rendering 
worthy of themselves. He was in advance of his 
age. So it is with Jesus Christ as a civilization. He 
had to wait for better mediums of expression. He 
grows with the centuries, and He needs the centuries 
in which to grow. All this He saw and anticipated 
from the start. In the Gospel He preached He saw 
the age of gold. In the liberty He proclaimed He 
saw the emancipation of the race. In the ideals which 
He unfolded He saw the regenerating forces at the 
roots of humanity. In His principles He saw em- 
pires. In the love which He brought to earth He 
saw a new civilization. In His own personality He 
saw an absolute and universal reign. The twenty 
centuries since Christ have revealed the Master as the 
one universal personage of the race. Christ is a 
civilization. He is a civilization that has not yet 
climaxed in the world. 

Science sets for itself the problem of drilling a 
mountain, and we have a feat of engineering. It is 
a triumph. Two companies start on opposite sides of 
the mountain and meet within, in the center, and pick 
strikes pick, and drill strikes drill, so accurately is the 
problem worked out. We want certitude like that in 
religion or else silence. 

PRAYERS. 

Lord teach us the dignity of the human soul. 
Give us a sight of life's value. Put to us the startling 
question: " What will it profit a man? etc." 

Give us to see the rainbow of hope on the black 
cloud of life's sorrow. 



56 A BOOK OP KEMEMBBANCE 



Brighten, deepen, hallow, refresh, cleanse us, and 
purify our sins. 

Remember and bless those who mourn. 

Give us courage in reserve. May our courage rise 
with the conflict. 

****** 

We thank Thee for the Bells of Easter Morning. 

We thank Thee for Love, for its duties, which are 
privileges; for its visions, which are inspiring; for its 
pleasures, which are the bonds of fellowship. 

We come before the throne of Thy Grace with 
Thanksgiving. 

On the walls of every home may there be inscribed 
the words of the Master. 

May God watch over the cradle. 

Help the sons and daughters of the home to re- 
member their father's God. May it be a joy that 
their father has a God. 

We pray for illumination. 

Kindle a light that shall call them to a new and 
better life. 

Keep us faithful and steadfast in the commonplace 
duties of every day. Make us practical. Give us 
common sense. 

When bowed down with weariness of soul and las- 
situde of body quicken us by Thy Good Spirit. 

5fc jji Jji ijC SjS iJS 

Take away from us all vain regrets. May we find 
our solace in efforts to do better. 



EELIGION 



57 



Be a help to us when the thing that is bitter befalls 
us. Be a real friend. Be a light in darkness. Be 
our stay in life's defeats, betrayals, disillusions. Put 
heart into us. 

Help us to forget all that it is best should be for- 
gotten. 

Grant that we may be educated in our responsibili- 
ties. Deliver us from pet aversions. Make us real- 
ize that we are capable of being divinely possessed. 

jjs >jj ifc >jc 

We thank Thee for the hiss of the world at the 
corruptions and neglects and failures and sins of the 
Church. Make it a messenger of God to awaken the 
Church to conscience, to self-shame, to repentance, to 
repudiation of evil, to reformation, and to a new and 
spotless life against which there is no condemnation. 
Lord, help the world to hiss whenever that is the 
divine order of the day. 

^ ^Jc s|c ^ jjc 

O God, Our God: Thou clothest Thyself with 
light as with a garment. Thou art our Ideal of Pu- 
rity, from whence cometh holy laws, purifying prin- 
ciples and inspiring purposes, and thoughts and reso- 
lutions, that sanctify and beautify and make perfect 
in holiness our immortal souls. 

Let the influence of precious memories sanctify us 
this day. The grand end of a Christian sanctuary 
and its ordinances is that the worshipper may be 



58 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



trained to inward holiness: to assimilate the splendors 
of the divine nature; and to make Godlike this life. 

Impart stimulus to my genius; let others with 
larger minds and finer ideals and greater enthusiasms 
live in and through me and give me a transfiguration. 

sjs jjc sjs 

We thank Thee for our soul- friends. 

* J|? 5$C * # Jjs 

Save us from irreligious solicitude for God. 

% jK sfc ijs 

Help us to avoid the men and women who have 
great skill in making trouble. Help the Church to 
isolate them and thus render them harmless. 

God, I thank Thee that love is in the world. I 
thank Thee for what it brings into life, and for what 
it makes out of life. I thank Thee that it is eternal. 
It has a glorious future. It makes lovers ; and lovers 
make heaven. 

We thank Thee for the Old Testament— that the 
religious action of Judaism has been colossal. 

Kindle within me, by Thy truth, a cleansing fire of 
shame and a longing that shall search through and 
through my manhood, and my purposes of life. 
Grant that while I live I may live mightily. 

Jj« =fs * ^ * * 



EELIGION 



59 



Save me from half truths. 

Grant us a new sense of the body as the Holy- 
Temple of God, as God's Holy Temple. Let me not 
lose my chastity of mind. Preserve to me my chas- 
tity of mind, I beseech Thee. 

Remember those whose enthusiasm is chilled and 
give them back the joys and delights of their early 
and first love. If we have any heresies, may they be 
healthful and health-giving heresies. Grant us the 
maximum of efficiency. 

Pity those who are sitting on their tombstones. 

5|C «|» 5jC 5jc >Jc j{c 

Spirits have passed from us whose example was 
inspirational: whose companionship was heartening: 
and whose services seemed indispensable. Lord send 
us their successors: send Joshua to lead in the place 
of Moses: send Elisha to take up the fallen mantle of 
Elijah. 

* * * * * * 

Our Father, we thank Thee for Thine unspeakable 
gift, even Jesus Christ our Lord and Master. We 
thank Thee for the life which He lived, the example 
which He set, the words which He spoke, the songs 
which He sang, the personality which He exercised, 
and the prayers which He offered. Through Him 
Thou hast revealed Thyself as the God of Love. We 
thank Thee for this hour in Thy sanctuary. It has 
been to us an hour of privilege and revelation, and 



60 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



holy fellowship with the Master. We have felt anew 
His interest in mankind. We thank Thee for His 
prayer for us, which we have studied together. His 
prayer has in it the glory of an inspiring promise and 
the beauty of a great hope, and the thrill of a splendid 
vision. May His great expectations relative to us 
govern us, and mold our lives. We pray for power 
to believe in the great fact which the prayer of the 
Master teaches us — that God keeps constant watch 
over His own, and that under the rule of His provi- 
dential hand all things work together for good for 
them who love God and are called according to His 
purpose. Trials and suffering are disciplinary: they 
are the furnace in which the fine gold is purified, 
purged of dross and refined to the seventh refining. 
We pray for oneness with the will of God: for self- 
mastery: and for the enthronement of the right in all 
of our faculties, and for the sanctification of the 
whole man. We pray for white robes to be worn 
here now during our walk with God on earth. May 
the whole of our life be a stepping-heavenward. 
Make and keep us men and women of the Ten Com- 
mandments: and of the Eight Beatitudes. Sanctify 
us through Thy truth. Thy word is truth. May our 
life be one series of triumphs — victory following vic- 
tory — until our last foe be overcome and we shall be 
enabled to shout, " O Death, where is thy sting ? 
O Grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be unto 
God who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
Jesus Christ.' , Hear us in this our prayer, and all the 
glory shall be Thine, forever and forever. Amen. 

^ sjs jf: sfc 5}t :ji 

We thank Thee for the songs of praise which Thou 



BELIGION 



61 



hast given us for hope, and confidence, and joy, and 
uplift, and courage, and inspiration; help us to live 
by them and by them sing ourselves through all the 
dark valleys of life as our fathers have done before 
us. Fill us with a noble discontent. May we thrill 
responsively to God and the things of God. In the 
pursuit of the good, grant us fixity of purpose. 

We pray for Thy benediction upon all the forces 
and agencies that make for the Christianizing of 
Christendom, and for the revival and purification of 
the Kingdom of God on earth. Give us sympathetic 
imagination. Endow us with intuitive knowledge. 
Give us the power of admiration, love for the noblest, 
tender pity for the weak and erring. 

Help us to take part in the prayers that rise here in 
Thy Holy Temple: and help us also to join in the 
praises of God which are sung here. Make Thy 
Temple a place of large communion not only with 
God, but also with the people of God. May the hour 
of worship be an uplift to us all: an hour of new life: 
of new association, and of new joy in the Lord. May 
our experience here to-day be such that with Thy 
servant of old we may be enabled to cry, " This is the 
House of God: this the gate of heaven." 

O God, give me a religion that is proof against the 
sadness of mortality; a religion that conquers the fear 
of death; that wins a victory over death itself; that 
grasps man's immortality and makes it a real govern- 
ing fact; a power; an inspiration; a personal force; 
that can overcome the pain of losing from the earth 



62 A BOOK OF BEMEMBBANCE 



those whom we love. " The Lord hath commanded 
the blessing, even life forevermore." 

We pray for those in whom there is no manifest 
disposition to acknowledge the divine claims ; but who 
are living on the divine bounty ; for " God giveth to 
all men liberally and upbraideth not." 

^ >}? 5jc ijt ijt 

Let our joy of heart be in that which Thou ap- 
provest. We thank Thee for the deep workings of 
Thy purposes which keep so much in store for the 
days to come. 

We thank Thee for the joys and opportunities of 
the Holy Sabbath. 

Make us upright in our dealings with our fellow- 
men. 

Soften the hard man's heart. 
Give new life to those who are soul-weary. 
Help us to believe in our better selves. 
Give us that joy that is protective and that is re- 
creative. 

Keep us from the taint of sin, and from the unrest 
of distrust. 

Give us the faculty of contemplation. 

Help us to look upon this church as a royal be- 
queathment, and a sacred trust ; the success of its past 
is a stimulus. 

Keep us keyed up to great expectations and antici- 
pations. May our hearts fully respond to Thy seek- 
ing love. Take out of our lives everything that comes 
between Thee and us. May Thy life stir the sources 
of life in us, so shine upon us that we may reflect 



EELIGION 



63 



something of Thy glory. May we aspire to the full 
rejoicing of our sonship. Grant us to realize the 
privilege of living, and the sacred truths of health 
and time. We suffer by anticipation. Keep us from 
this. 

Keep us ever in the condition of inquiry. O Great 
Keeper of the destinies of men, send us the blessed 
assurance that man's end is not death, but life ever- 
lasting; not defeat, but glorious victory. 

We pray for the baptism of the Holy Spirit that we 
may be endued with power from on high; that we 
may be intensified as men and women of God; and 
helped to live luminous and attractive lives among 
men. Help us to look upon success as a duty. 

Help us to trust in the midst of the mysteries that 
fill our life. These mysteries, which perplex man- 
kind, the mysteries of life and the mysteries of death, 
are Thy purposes and serve some grand end, for 
Thou art the Lord of life and Thou art the Lord of 
death. 

Our Father, we have come to Thy house this morn- 
ing to meet the Master, to see Him face to face, to 
feel the charm of His personality, and to thrill anew 
in response to His life-giving words. We thank Thee 
for His prayer of intercession from which we have 
read. Guide us as we ponder this prayer together 
and while we gather from it the ideals which He 
brought from heaven to earth. May we remember 



64 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



that the ideals of Jesus Christ are the working forces 
of humanity. 

Our Father, we thank Thee for this church of Thy 
planting; and for the season of success which Thou 
art granting it. We thank Thee for the fruitful la- 
bors of the pastor, and for the uplifting power which 
his character is in this community. May the Chris- 
tian men and women here associated in his church be 
a holy band whose hearts the Lord hath touched. 
Give light to those who are in darkness and breathe 
hope into those who are disheartened and downcast, 
and comfort those who mourn. Over every new- 
made grave do Thou inscribe the consolation of di- 
vine grace contained in the Beatitudes uttered by the 
Master, " Blessed are the dead that die in the Lord." 

Lord, teach us to pray, and in prayer how to spe- 
cialize. Thou hast made abundant provision for all 
of our needs. The promises cover all contingencies. 
May we build our prayers out of the promises. Give 
us the things that persuade the soul to pray. 

Assist us in the service of praise. Help us to sing 
the songs of the soul which the ages have given us in 
a way that our faith and hope and love may reach a 
white heat and so that our Christian life among men 
may glow with the beauty of the Lord. We would 
be made intense souls. 

^ ^ >it * ^ * 

Bless us in the enjoyment of the communion of the 
saints. Make us men and women of right affinities. 
Keep us in touch with great and holy personalities 



EELIGION 



65 



that they may educate us in our privileges and possi- 
bilities and be a conscience to us, and set before us 
uplifting ideals, and be to us an added life. Save us, 
O God, from arrested development. Educate us in 
our admirations, — our admirations are our equipment 
for life. May we learn from our experience that to 
love and admire and fellowship with a pure and beau- 
tiful soul is a religion in itself. Its holy messages 
may beget in us holy purposes which shall fruit in 
a holy life. Give us faith to turn the grand promises 
of the covenant into burning desires and fervent peti- 
tions, so that through prayer there may be realized to 
us the words of the Master, " Blessed are they who 
do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they 
shall be filled." Make us men and women of the 
Eight Beatitudes and of the Ten Commandments, and 
of the innumerable promises. Lord, we thank Thee 
for the golden age that beckons us on. Give more 
and more of the vision splendid that we may go on 
exhilarated and filled with a fresh passion for the 
cause of God. We thank Thee that the truth is ever- 
more annexing men through love to the Kingdom of 
Heaven. 

May our troubles in life be purifying troubles. 

# * ifc * * * 

We thank Thee for this day which bears the name 
of the Lord, " The Lord's Day," this day which is the 
monument and memorial of the resurrection of Jesus 
Christ from the dead. It is a day glorious with the 
faith of centuries, eloquent with holy associations, the 
day of the communion of the saints. 

*jc *J« 



66 



A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



May those who enter Thy house leave their burden 
behind, and take away the song. May they reach 
here that faith that casts out fear, that hope that de- 
fies despair, and that love that knoweth the deep 
things of God. 

* * # * * * 

Our Father, correct our mistakes, open the eyes of 
our understanding, renew our faith, rekindle our 
hope. May the Master give us of His genius, fill us 
with His ideals, and make us new creatures. Grant 
us absolute surrender of soul and body to God. Make 
us great souls. Enable us to build up Godlike per- 
sonalities, grant unto us glorious transfigurations. 
Make us partakers of the divine nature. Make us 
incarnations of God's thoughts. 

Comfort those who are growing old and to whom 
age brings regrets and humiliations. Make hope take 
the place of sorrow. Living or dying Thou art our 
hope. 

H* H* *fc *H 

Our Father, we thank Thee for the friendships and 
the fellowships of life. Bless us in the enjoyment of 
these to-day. Bless the food of which we are about 
to partake; may we derive strength from it for our 
duties, and may it be to us an added life. We ask 
these things in the name of the Master. Amen. 

*|? ^ 5j< 5^ 5{x 2^ 

Grant that we may be educated in our responsibili- 
ties. Love us forgivingly. Deliver us from a culpa- 
ble silence. Give us the catholic and open mind. 
Save us from bigotry and narrowness. Give us self- 



RELIGION 



67 



knowledge. Grant us to dwell on the Mount of Beati- 
tudes. Give us the grace of meditation; the gift of 
discrimination; and the ability to choose. We pray 
for visions; for the sensitive conscience; for love of 
the good and great, and a white heat. Help us to 
learn from human experience. We thank Thee for 
the golden age that beckons us on. Give us invincible 
fineness of soul ; right affinities ; luminous lives. Help 
us to deal with things that count; and give place and 
welcome to the holiest emotions, that we may be 
raised to a higher plane of life. 

We pray for enthusiasm in the things of God, and 
for freshness of feelings. We pray for pure sancti- 
ties, heavenly affinities, holy associations. Save us 
from arrested development. Teach us, when need 
is, how to efface ourselves. Fulfill in us and through 
us the splendid promises of Thy Word. Give us to 
see the rainbow on every cloud of sorrow. Keep us 
on the active list. Keep us in constant touch with 
great personalities. We pray for illumination. Make 
us charitable. Give us common sense. Give us a 
grand objective in life. 

Thine, O God, is the day, and Thine is the house, 
and Thine is the Book, and Thine are the people. 
Bless Thy day, Thy house, Thy Book, Thy people. 
Be here in our midst and breathe peace upon us. Give 
us clean hands that we may acceptably take the holy 
things of our religion, and give us pure hearts that we 
may see God. These things we ask in the name of 
the Master who taught us to pray " Our Father." 



68 A BOOK OF BEMEMBEANCE 



Master, in giving our gifts, enable us to pattern 
after Thee; first of all may we give ourselves. May 
we give in such a spirit that our gifts shall express 
our love to Thee, and our faith in Thy cause. We 
put our offerings into the hands of the Lord, and ask 
Him to consecrate them to holy service. 

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We thank Thee for those who have been made 
eminent by death. Their graves are influential 
among us. 

* * * * * * 

Our Father, we come to Thy house to be heart- 
ened, and refreshed, and remade. We are seeking 
our best selves. We covet earnestly the best moods, 
the moods out of which grow great resolves, and 
great purposes, and great enterprises. Grant us these 
moods with the optimism, and the freshness of feel- 
ing, and the self-assurance which they bring. While 
we are in these moods do Thou lead us to make our 
choices for life, and form our plans, and determine 
our gifts, and consecrate ourselves anew to the serv- 
ices of God and of humanity. Give us great objec- 
tives in life. We pray to-day that we may be renewed 
in the whole man. We ask for the open and receptive 
mind that we may welcome all known truth. We ask 
for the pure heart that we may be able to perceive the 
things of God. We ask Thee for the quickened con- 
science that we may be sensitive to good and evil. 
Bless every part of this service. May the presence of 
the Holy Spirit make this Sabbath a Pentecost full of 
the bestowal of Christian gifts and graces. May 
these gifts and graces help us to touch life to finer 
issues, and to fulfill our mission as witnesses for God. 



EELIGION 



69 



Guide us as we enjoy the privileges of the sanctuary. 
Give us a reverent and believing spirit when we read 
the divine Book so that its holy messages may beget in 
us holy purposes which shall fruit in a holy life. 
Sanctify us through Thy truth. Thy word is truth. 

****** 

Save us from a half life. May our whole life be a 
stepping heavenward. Help us to specialize Thee. 
Fertilize our beliefs. Give us to enjoy the liberty of 
the Sons of God. 

O God, Thou hast but one Son; but Him Thou 
hast made a Minister. In His name, we ask Thee to 
make the ministers who preach His Gospel both effi- 
cient and sufficient in their divine calling. O God, 
baptize the churches with the spirit of peace for the 
schools of the Prophets. 

We thank Thee for the men and women of Jesus 
Christ who are the glory and strength of the Church. 
They study large maps. They undertake great enter- 
prises. They live converting and convincing lives. 
Such men and women are more than men and women. 
They are epochs, they are the golden age. The touch 
divine of such natures tones us up, — assimilates us. 
They are an added life to us. Lord, we want in our 
Church and in our nation such public souls. 

May we fall in love with love. When we are in- 
clined to think that our sorrows are hopeless sorrows, 
at that moment may we hear the voice of the Master 



70 A BOOK OF KEMEMBEAETCE 



saying, " Come unto me all ye that labor and are 
heavy laden and I will give you rest." 

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Oh, help us to sing all through life! To sing for 
relief; to sing for joy; to sing for the edification, in- 
spiration and comfort of others. Sing even though 
the voice breaks, and the tears pour down our cheeks, 
sing and cry at the same time. 

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Remember our children who have reached the age 
of purpose. Give them special guidance. Give them, 
in forming friends, companions full of experience 
and wisdom. 

A prayer of John Pulsford: "O Jesus, my eternal 
Mercy, forgive me: O Jesus, my eternal Holiness, 
sanctify me: O Jesus, my eternal Life, renew me: 
O Jesus, my eternal Beauty, clothe me: O Jesus, 
my eternal Youth, flourish within me and upon me. 
Amen." 

May they be a band whose heart the Lord hath 
touched. May they give God good reason for bless- 
ing them. But Thou, O God, dost need no compul- 
sion. Thou art more ready to give than Thy people 
are ready to receive. May they do God's work in 
God's way. May this church be filled with the Holy 
Spirit and power. We thank Thee for Thy honored 
servants who have labored here, who have been lead- 
ers indeed. Who taught professors of Christianity 
how to live the Christian life, and how to die the 
Christian death. This is a place of holy associations, 



KELIGION 



71 



and of blessed memories, a place to think of those 
who have gone before, and to whom death is gain. 
When the chariot swings low, may we be found ready 
to ride on high to rejoin them in the Celestial City. 
Grant that the Holy Spirit may be here to do His 
office, His work of consolation, and of continuing the 
presence of Christ, and His life. May He illuminate 
the pages of the sacred book, and apply the preached 
word, and through the transfiguration of the people 
make it attractive. May He take the things of Christ 
and show them unto us, and in the hour of prayer 
may He make intercessions within us beyond the 
power of utterance. May the Holy Spirit glorify 
Christ in our midst to-day that there may be a new 
outgoing of our hearts to the Master and a new coro- 
nation of Him as King of Kings and Lord of Lords. 
Make us sons and daughters of the Highest, aflame 
with enthusiasm, and full of optimism relative to the 
Kingdom of God on earth. With us may optimism 
be translated into power and service. We thank Thee 
for the love of friends who have gone to the com- 
munion that encircles the Eternal Christ, and to 
whom death is gain. 

Our Father, we thank Thee for all Thy gifts. 
Grant us Thy blessing with them. While we now 
feast our bodies with these bounties of Thy grace, 
grant that we may feast our souls upon the Bread of 
Life, upon the blessed memories that console and 
upon the promises that pertain to the life eternal. 
We offer our prayer in the name of the Master. 
Amen. 



72 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



GOD'S LOGIC. 

In the reputed life and sayings of Jesus of Naza- 
reth we have the most perfect philosophy of life yet 
presented to the mind of man. Whatever is true be- 
longs to Christian teaching. 

Ideas, whether incorporated in myths or in dogmas, 
or in rites, or in institutions, are ideas. Ideas refine, 
develop, control, construct, inspire, fascinate. 

The whole of creation is but an instantaneous 
thought of God. 

THE HUMAN WILL. 

The will should receive a careful training. Great 
souls have great wills; feeble souls have only wishes. 

Life is transfigured in and by and through a grand 
purpose. It was when Moses and Elijah on the 
Mount talked with Jesus about His great purpose 
which brought Him to earth, — " the decease He was 
about to accomplish at Jerusalem," — that He was 
transfigured, and His face did shine as the sun and 
His raiment was white as the light. 

The determining power of the soul is the will. 

THE LORD'S SUPPER. 

The Lord's Supper is the Gospel in a sacrament. 
We have the Gospel in many forms — The Gospel in 
song — The Gospel in a Life — The Gospel in a prayer 
— The Gospel in a symbol — The Gospel in a picture. 
On Christ's part the Lord's Supper is an offer of 
Himself to us. " Take," He says. On our part, what 
is it? It expresses our allegiance to Him. Chris- 



EELIGION 



73 



tians, we must give Christ the place He claims at His 
sacrament. We must take Him as our Lord and 
Life. Ralph Waldo Emerson resigned his pastorate 
because he could not enter into this sacrament. He 
had a clear vision. He saw what the sacrament was 
and meant, — the claims it made for Christ. Christ 
sits at the head of the table. We nourish our life 
out of His. To Emerson the Lord's Supper was a 
witness to Christ's deity. We say to Him when we 
celebrate it, " Thou art the Son of the Living God." 
He says, " He that hath seen me hath seen the Fa- 
ther." There is a lessening sense of responsibilities 
in the celebration of the Lord's Supper, and narrow- 
ing of its interpretation. Seek the true restoration 
of the sacrament. Let there be no impoverishment 
of the death of Christ. 

You may have a great deal of religion and be very 
miserable with it. You may be a Christian and never 
come to the Marriage Supper of the Lamb, i. e., share 
in the joy of the Lord. 

While our bodies worship by using these sacra- 
mental elements, may our souls worship by the exer- 
cise of a sacramental faith. 

The Lord's Supper comes to us with its Gospel for 
the senses as well as for the soul. Its symbols speak 
in all languages. This sacrament reconstructs for us 
the final teaching of the Master. Here Jesus speaks 
to us in symbols wider than language itself. The 
master-thought of Jesus lives here. 

What is communion with God? Church services 
mean communion. A walk in, nature means com- 



74 A BOOK OF KEMEMBRANCE 



munion. The inner chamber, the place of prayer, 
means communion. We commune with God when 
we read the self-contained chapters of the Book. 
They are the Holy of Holies. For example, the sev- 
enteenth chapter of the Gospel of John lets us into the 
very core of the inner life of Christ. 

When the sacraments of the New Testament are 
set forth in their native glory and are used according 
to their original purpose, they are mighty spiritual 
powers in the realm of the Christian religion. In 
gathering the sacramental material which we seek for 
our enrichment, we shall be brought into touch and 
fellowship with the sacramental hosts of God's elect. 
This surely is a high prospect. It should prove elec- 
tric and inspirational. What the sacraments have 
been to the foremost of God's people they may be to 
us. The right use of sacramental things will make us 
sacramental persons. There is no goal on this earth 
beyond this. 

The fact is the Lord's Supper sets forth the essen- 
tials of our faith as no words could; and certainly 
implies the presence of Christ in a very real and spiri- 
tual way. The Mass in the Roman Church will al- 
ways be its strongest weapon because it contains a 
kernel of the living truth. 

The Lord's Supper was His institution at the mo- 
ment when His divine consciousness was at its clear- 
est, and His love to mankind was at full tide. Ah, 
this is holy ground ! 

Remember Leonardo da Vinci's painting of the 
Lord's Supper and the glory of the sacramental cup. 



KELIGION 



75 



He took the brush and blotted it out. It was the 
Christ he wanted to shine and attract and be admired. 

The sacramental sense must be fostered in us. 

The celebration of the Lord's Supper gives us an- 
other opportunity to vocalize our faith in the Master, 
and to express our love. Faith and love grow by ex- 
pression, and are made influential and working forces 
in humanity. 

May the spirit of Jesus Christ be the rule of our 
life. Turn every meal into a Lord's Supper. Glorify 
God in eating and drinking. May the Holy Spirit 
be here to give value and meaning to this communion 
service. It is the spirit of a man that gives character 
to what he does. 

The Lord's Supper secures a combination testi- 
mony. 

The Lord's Supper is a fine piece of narrative 
work, a veritable thrill. There is more room in 
Christ's great heart than man can fill; hence His un- 
limited invitation on every sacramental occasion, 
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
laden and I will give you rest." 

The sacred record which gives the story of the in- 
stitution of the Lord's Supper tells us that on the 
night in which He was betrayed Jesus took bread, 
brake and blessed it, set it apart from a common to a 
sacramental use, and gave it to His disciples, saying, 
" This bread is my body, broken for you ; take, eat, 
and this do in remembrance of me." Further on the 
sacred record reads, "And after they had partaken of 



76 A BOOK OF KEMEMBEANCE 



the bread, the Master took the cup also and gave it to 
His disciples," explaining its meaning in these words, 
" This cup is the New Testament in my blood shed 
for many for the remission of sins. Take ye, drink 
ye, drink ye all of it." With these words of the 
Master explanatory of this holy ordinance before us 
the question which we ask ourselves at this time is 
this: " What is the meaning of the celebration of the 
Lord's Supper ? " Paul, the chief of the apostles, 
joins here and helps us in our search for the right 
answer to the question " What is the meaning of the 
celebration of the Lord's Supper? " In his Epistle to 
the Christian Church at Corinth in which he rein- 
states the Lord's Supper and explains anew its pur- 
port and meaning, he writes, "As often as ye eat of 
this bread or drink of this cup ye do show " — de- 
clare — " the Lord's death till He come." This is the 
meaning of the celebration of the Lord's Supper: 
" Ye do declare the Lord's death." 

The celebration of the Lord's Supper italicizes the 
cross of Jesus Christ. The celebration of the Lord's 
Supper lifts up before the world the crucified Christ 
as the Saviour of mankind. The celebration of the 
Lord's Supper is the Church preaching the gospel of 
salvation to the lost by means of and by the use of 
sacramental acts and symbols. The celebration of 
the Lord's Supper is the sacramental host of God's 
elect crying in the hearing of the universe, " Hosanna 
to the Son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the 
name of the Lord; Hosanna in the highest! " When 
God calls us to celebrate the Lord's Supper, He calls 
us to render a grand service, a grand service to the 
memory of His beloved Son; a grand service in the 



EELIGION 



77 



salvation of the human race. In receiving this sacra- 
mental bread remember the words of the Master, 
" This is my body, broken for you ; take, eat, this do 
in remembrance of me." 

The Lord's Supper comes to us with its gospel for 
the senses as well as for the soul. Its symbols speak 
in all languages. This sacrament reconstructs for us 
the final teachings of the Saviour. Here Jesus speaks 
to us in symbols wider than language itself. The 
master thought of Jesus lies here. 

The sacramental room is the inner sanctuary of 
love. 

Give us deep insight as we deal with the acted par- 
able of the Lord's Supper, — its responsive acts, on the 
Master's part, and on our part. 

" Ye do show, *. e. y declare the Lord's death till He 
come," says the Apostle Paul (1 Cor. 11: 26). 

Its celebration, therefore, is the great congregation 
shouting in the hearing of the world, " Hosanna to 
the Son of David: Blessed is He that cometh in the 
name of the Lord ; Hosanna in the highest ! " The 
Master declares His cross as the atonement for our 
sins; and Himself as the Bread of Life to our souls. 
He says, " I give." We say, " I take." 

The Master made His death a first rank truth by 
italicizing it in the Lord's Supper. 

These sacramental days are rich and gracious days. 
Our souls feed on the memory of them. They are 
full of holy impressions; great thoughts; and unutter- 
able expectations. Feast the soul on Him who is the 



78 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



chiefest among ten thousand and altogether lovely. 
He is the positive magnet of the ages. We are en- 
tranced with His vision. 

The Lord's Supper has the power to enlarge Chris- 
tian fellowship, inspire visions, comfort, endear the 
Master, renew the memory, exhibit the cardinals of 
the Gospel, call into exercise all of the Christian 
graces, tone us up. It is a symbolic ordinance. It 
helps us to visualize Him. The cup stands for Cal- 
vary to fellowship us with the great of all ages. The 
great facts which we see here are like the jewels 
which the artist keeps on his easel to tone up his sense 
of color. Let Christ live in you. He fixed His own 
view of death immemorably by this rite. 

This table is set for two parties. It refreshes 
Christ. We should ever keep our faculties open 
Godward. The Lord's Supper is the ordinance of 
the continuance of fellowship. 

It is a memorial, it is a challenge, it is a safeguard, 
it is the Lord's own institution and bears His name. 
The Lord's Supper is not an anti-climax: it is a cli- 
max. Its teachings are in focus with the great doc- 
trines of the Gospel. It is none other than an 
epitome of these doctrines. 

Live amid the influences of a set of holy stimuli, — 
these will arouse you. The Lord's Supper can place 
you in the midst of these. 

The celebration of the Lord's Supper proclaims 
that you realize that the dead on the cross was and is 
no dead thing. Its meaning and power, by the cele- 
bration of this ordinance, live afresh in your midst. 



EELIGION 



79 



Its celebration is not only the utterance of a " Ho- 
sanna to the Son of David! " but is a repetition of His 
triumphant shout on the cross, " It is finished ! " It 
is a memorial of the fact that everything requisite for 
our redemption is complete and effective and that our 
salvation through Christ is perfect. 

May we all feel the spell of His presence. We join 
hands across the centuries with those who have hon- 
ored Him in this ordinance. 

The Lord's Supper has a reason for being. It 
helps to visualize Christ. Its meanings have kept it 
alive. 

Christ is a self-communicating personality to be 
laid hold of and appropriated. What says He here in 
the unchangeable language of symbols? Let Christ 
live in you. Paul did, John did. 

Every ordinance has its distinct message. Is the 
sacrament private property? 

May Jesus be transfigured in the sacramental room 
always. The sacramental room should be inspira- 
tional. The Lord's Supper is the Master's yearning. 

The object of this service is to give the sacramental 
life more meaning. If Christ dwell in you let Him 
do some of the hard things in your life. These are 
the steps: — to begin with, it is I and not Christ, then 
it is Christ and I, then finally it is Christ and not I. 

The seventh chapter of Romans is a chapter of 
" I." You have " I " twenty times. Let no man try 
to live it over again. It is not a chapter to reproduce. 



80 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



Move on into the eighth chapter of Romans, which 
is a chapter of Christ; and hence is a chapter of the 
higher spiritual life; the superlative life; the sacra- 
mental life. The eighth chapter is the very antipodes 
of the seventh. Instead of being a wail it is a con- 
tinuous anthem beginning with no condemnation and 
ending with no separation. 

The Lord's Supper is the institutional utterance of 
Christ's yearning for His own. Here Christ talks 
out to us ; here we ought to talk out to Christ. It is a 
day when we count our privileges. 

The sacramental room is a splendid place in which 
to give ourselves up to contemplation. The artist 
spends weeks and months in the Louvre, Paris, in the 
Pitti Palace, Florence, and in the art galleries of 
Dresden studying the masterpieces of the masters of 
the brush and palette both modern and ancient. They 
worship these embodied ideals of beauty. They 
breathe their air until their power and loveliness mold 
their taste. That is part of their growth. It is their 
enjoyment. Fine admirations are a fine equipment. 
Pure hero-worship is a tonic. It is a holy stimula- 
tion. 

Legend says that Hypatia packed her pauses full of 
feeling. The silence in the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper is full of feeling. 

Give us while in the sacramental room the catholic 
mind, save us from bigotry and narrowness. Give us 
self-knowledge. Grant us to dwell on the Mount of 
Beatitudes. Give us the grace of meditation, the gift 
of discrimination; the ability to choose. Give us 



EELIGION 



81 



sensitive consciences. Give us love at a white heat; 
love for God and our fellowmen. Help us to learn 
from human experiences. Help us to give place to 
the noblest emotions that we may be raised to a higher 
plane of life. Help us to capitalize the right, to 
choose and cultivate right affinities, and to deal with 
the things that count, and that exhilarate, and that 
ennoble, and make for luminous lives, and invincible 
fineness of soul. 

We thank Thee that in the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper we can all speak and bear public testimony for 
the Master, and by symbols and symbolic acts preach 
His Gospel to mankind. 

Remove the dying request of Jesus out of the 
sphere of duty into the sphere of privilege and de- 
light. The celebration of the Lord's Supper gives us 
another opportunity to vocalize our faith in the Mas- 
ter, and to express our love. It centers the thoughts 
of our fellowmen on the Master. 

The words of the Master must be repeated anew at 
each celebration. This is the way the Master speaks 
to us. 

What the Lord's Supper pledges! It pledges 
Christ. We did not ask this. It pledges Him to re- 
member us; to forgive us; to love us. We pledge 
ourselves to loyalty. The celebration secures a com- 
bination testimony. 

The Lord's Supper is the Gospel in a sacrament. 
We have the Gospel in many forms; the Gospel in a 
song, the Gospel in a holy personality; the Gospel in 



82 A BOOK OF BEMEMBEANCB 



a life; in a symbol; in a picture; in a prayer; in a 
temple. 

May the spirit of Jesus Christ rule our life and 
may He repeat Himself in us and through us. May 
we let the white light of the Master's character and 
life shine upon us that we may be searched and re- 
vealed and purified and transfigured. We thank 
Thee for Jesus Christ. He is the way, the truth, 
and the life. He is manhood full-orbed. He is our 
better selves realized; our personalities revealed. He 
is the revelation of the Father. " In Him dwelleth 
all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." Help us to 
keep our faculties open Godward. Help us to live 
the sacramental life. Oh, help this whole audience to 
fall down in confession before Thee! May we take 
away with us a whole gospel, and a whole communion 
of the saints, and a whole Christ. Give us the grace 
of appreciation and of appropriation. Give us the 
things which persuade the soul to prayer. 

Jesus Christ has the value of God to us. While 
the sacramental cup is in our hand may the sacra- 
mental song be in our heart. 

When the sacraments of the New Testament are 
set forth in their native glory, and are used according 
to their original purpose, they are mighty spiritual 
powers. What they have been to the foremost of 
God's people. The right use of sacramental things 
makes sacramental people. There is no goal beyond 
this. 

The sacramental stillness and holy hush is favor- 
able to good listening. The silence of Sinai produces 



EELIGION 



83 



the Decalogues. The silence of Patmos, the Apoca- 
lypse. 

A whole theology is in the Lord's Supper. All the 
great chapters in the Book are in it. 

The Lord's Supper has had a wonderful career. 
Full of Christophanies. 

Simply be filled with the fullness of Christ and His 
divine light, and He will transfigure you. 

We are in search of the highest views. I am to 
regard the ordinance as a means whereby I am to be 
brought into a place of greater nearness to the Mas- 
ter. 

The sacramental moods are moods of expectancy, 
moods of consecration, moods of faith, moods of joy. 

A Prayer. Breathe into the sacred symbols the 
breath of life. Make them tell anew and thrillingly 
the story of the cross. May they interpret the Mas- 
ter to us, and His great passion to serve. May they 
talk to us of the fullness of His undying love, and 
may our use of them inspire in us a larger faith, and 
a more complete consecration to Him and His cause. 
By a proper use of these sacramental symbols may we 
unitedly preach the Gospel to the world, and declare 
the Lord's saving death till He come. Help us to 
idealize this ordinance of the Master's appointment, 
and make it a New Testament to the world. 

The Lord's Supper is the grand Hallelujah Chorus 
of the holy ordinances of religion. 

If Christ is not in the sacramental room He is no- 



84 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



where. He is here in these symbols as really as He 
is in the midst of the majesty of the right hand of 
God in Heaven. 

We give these sacramental things to God to be 
used. We expect Him to use them as we expect to 
use the Book, as the organ with its musical keys 
which leads our praises. We bring out these cups 
and plates and set apart this bread and this wine and 
we expect Him to make them all sacramental. We 
mean them to refresh both the Master and ourselves. 

The sacramental hour is a time for large things, 
large scriptures, large prayers, large thoughts, large 
visions, large aspirations, large songs of praise. It is 
a luminous hour. It transfigures time. It is the 
hour of Pisgah-tops. 

We come into His sacramental presence to know 
ourselves, to see how much we are on the Lord's side, 
to gauge our feelings Christward, to see how He 
moves us, how we admire Him, to clear up our mis- 
understandings. 

The sacramental hour is the knock of God at the 
door of your soul, " Lift up your heads, O ye gates, 
and be ye lifted up, ye everlasting doors, that the 
King of Glory may come in." 

May we feel the spell of His presence. We join 
hands across the centuries with the chosen few who 
communed with the Master in the upper room. 

The sacramental atmosphere is the spiritual at- 
mosphere raised to a tropical temperature in which 
our natures blossom and bear fruit. 



KELIGIOtf 



85 



Give us the faculty of appreciation. The Lord's 
Supper is a drama, not a word spoken, — only acts. 

Leave room for the Master to speak. By the 
Lord's Supper the name of Jesus has been kept alive. 

May there be in us a sacramental response. May 
it bind us to a new loyalty. 

Appreciation is a sacramental grace. 

The Lord's Supper in its unbroken celebration 
shows that Jesus Christ has reached two thousand 
years of life and power. This demonstrates that time 
cannot destroy Him. He is to-day the mightiest 
power in the world. 

EVIDENCES FOR ETERNITY. 

What is God's cosmic plan for us? There is His 
power as in the story of creation working right along 
through chaos and stopping not until a voice says, 
"All is good." 

God has thousands of bells of gold; and every bell 
of His rings out the fact of succession. You hear 
these bells of God ringing in nature, in the succession 
of day and night, in the going and coming of the 
seasons. You hear these bells ringing, in history; 
Aaron and then Eleazar; Elijah then Elisha; Bacon 
then Newton ; the Pilgrim then the Puritan. 

Speaking historically the belief in the reality of 
the life everlasting supports itself in three ways: 
1. From Instinct, 2. From Reason, 3. From Chris- 
tian experience and insight, and there are thus three 
ways of gaining victory over death. Historians of 



86 A BOOK OF BEMEMBBANCE 



the religions of the world tell us that almost all people 
believe in the reality of life after death. Egypt, for 
example, is really a vast tomb. Pyramids, temples, 
tombs line the banks of the Nile. For from five 
thousand to ten thousand years they have spoken. 
The song there has been : " Thanks be to God who 
giveth us the victory through instinct." Socrates 
faced death victoriously in the strength of reason. 
He says death is either extinction or a migration to 
another world, where are the good and great of all 
ages; — a glorious communion. Reason is the ulti- 
mate test of religion. 

The results of science are the religion of humanity. 

NATURE AND THE ETERNAL. 

Nature is the book — the book of God. It reveals 
God as everywhere present. Mungo Park, the 
traveller, tells how he was heartened by the tiny plant 
which he found growing in the desert. Filled with 
courage he pushed on to a place of comfort. Was 
Mungo Park a fool? No. But the man who says 
there is no God ! is a fool. " There is a power not 
ourselves that makes for righteousness " (Matthew 
Arnold). All these forces of Nature are evidences 
of Being. 

Nature is a cabinet of good thoughts — good 
thoughts are great thoughts and great thoughts make 
great men. Are we weak? God is power. 

Admire the landscape and adore the Creator of it 
who has filled it with glory. While we saturate our- * 
selves with Beauty we bathe in the Infinite. 



RELIGION 



87 



We feel the thrill of life as we fellowship with the 
flowers and fields and trees. All nature is alive with 
the new life of spring. 

Light as seen in the sunbeam is supreme in its 
beauty; and even the sunbeam can be transfigured. 
Run it through the prism and it becomes supreme 
beauty multiplied sevenfold. Things can be trans- 
figured. So can men and women be. 

A glorious day of sunshine is a smile of God. 

April breathes promises into the air. 
June is the month of fulfilled glory. 

To-morrow is a new day. A new day is a new 
chance. What a divine invention a bright morning 
is! It vows and challenges discomforted souls to 
try again. What a piece of genius is night! With 
sleep its great anaesthetic! It puts the senses to rest: 
it renews: it recreates. 

Help the farmer to cross over the rainbow-bridge 
into the joys and the security of the harvest-cove- 
nant. The farmers are partners with God — co-work- 
ers in sustaining the world's life. 

May his gun forever miss fire that would thin the 
ranks of the singing birds. 

Nature is full of the hues of the infinite. 

What would happen if conformity should get hold 
of Nature? The spirit of beauty is abroad this 
month of June. Let us have the religion of June. 
The bloom of the rose is natural piety. The lily 
comes up in faith and love and hope. Every day is 



88 A BOOK OP KEMEMBRANCE 



brimful of promise. Everything says: "Believe in 
something good." " Believe in Him who inspires all 
things." Everything is looking forward. 

I find in beauty the wine of immortality. 

Beauty shines in every rose that blooms; hence the 
grandeur of the spring and summer. 

Spring is the oldest of all sacraments. The spring 
birds are voices clothed in feathers. Their voices are 
keyed to prayer, and praise, and prophecy. 

Science tells us that our continent now waving 
with harvests from Maine to Oregon began its his- 
tory on cold dead rock. 

Nature in spring: — Every new leaf a psalm, every 
flower a glory, every bird a chorister, every sight a 
beauty, and every sound a bit of the music of heaven 
strayed to earth. 

Poets have humanized Nature. They have given 
it a human voice, — Mother Earth. 

The white lilies, and the red roses, and the blue- 
bells, and the violets, and the golden jasmine, tell us 
the secrets of the sunshine, an the glories wrapped 
in the sunbeam. 

Lord Kelvin says: "If a single atom were neg- 
lected so that it dropped out of its place, the whole 
universe would go crashing into ruins." God con- 
trols atoms by the law of force. 

The nebulae out of which worlds are being made 
are the graves of dead worlds and the cradles of new 



EELIGION 



89 



worlds, immense masses of unorganized matter that 
have been floating in space: the wreckage from col- 
lisions of suns now ready to revert in the process of 
time to their original condition, thus proving that in 
nature nothing is lost. 

SCIENCE AND THE SOUL. 

Faraday once proved by experiment that gold was 
among the slowest metals to sink. A percipitate of 
gold he showed might take months to fall to the bot- 
tom of a glass jar not more than five inches high. 
The finer elements of faith and truth also require 
time and steady thought if they are to sink down into 
our being. 

Truth is busy annexing new territory to the King- 
dom of God. 

The Christian does not look with dismay upon the 
researches of science into Nature. He counts the 
facts written on the rock-leaves beneath, and the 
star-depths above, as the writing of God. It is writ- 
ing that no man has been able to change or trifle with. 

Put an electric flame back of a gas jet and throw 
both upon a screen and the gas jet will cast a shadow. 
All transfigurations are from the inside out. 

Agassiz asserted over and over and over that all 
facts of geology and zoology exhibit thought and 
prescience, and reveal a thinker, a person. 

To the planets God gave Newton; to the bees 
Huber; to the plants Linnaeus; to the birds Audu- 
bon; to the slaves Phillips ; to the savages Living- 
stone. 



90 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 

DEATH. 

Give us such faith that when the hour of death 
comes to us we may be enabled to commit our soul to 
God in victory, saying, " O death, where is thy 
sting, O grave, where is thy victory? Thanks be 
unto God who giveth us the victory through our 
Lord Jesus Christ." 

There are many notable and fruitful deaths. 

Give us victory over the fear of death. 

Enable us to enter upon the quiet anticipation of 
death. 

So many men sit on their tombstones. 

Death is of nature and nature knows no evil. 

Let the message of death to the believing heart be 
life eternal. 

Life grows gray in the absence of departed friends. 

Grant that we may be respectful towards God when 
dealing with death. The saint dies in the Lord just 
as much as he lives in the Lord. 

Death is not the bitterest of all experiences. 

" Our people die well," said John Wesley. 

The sunset of life means the sunrise of eternity. 

Norway's midnight sun sets into sunrise. 

Our despair at losing those whom we love springs 
often from secret causes of self-love, and of coward- 



EELIGION 



91 



ice in the presence of new duties which their absence 
creates for us. 

Nine days before his death Longfellow wrote: 

" Out of the shadows of night, 
The world rolls into light, 
It is daybreak everywhere." 

A friend dies and leaves us. Then what? At first 
a memory shrouded in despair. Then a living pres- 
ence, a ministering spirit — answering doubts, 
calming fears, stirring up noble aspirations, leading 
us upwards step by step to faith and peace and hope. 

The mystery of birth is the parallel of the mystery 
of death. We relive the past life with those who 
have gone. 

{ 

In the presence of our beloved dead we need some- 
thing more than a pessimist's philosophy. 

Death is the door into a larger destiny. 

When this world is through with us there is a place 
ready for us. " Let not your heart be troubled." 

The fear of age and of death is the shadow of life. 
It is full of horror. The Greeks had it. 

Death has never deceived any man. You can 
count on dying. 

What will be the drama played out upon my death- 
bed? 

It seemed as though my friend had everything to 
live for. Surely God in taking him to Himself at 



92 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKAN CE 



this time of life must mean that his striking death 
shall be a special service, for no man dieth to himself, 
any more than any man liveth to himself. Our death 
is as much of a service as our life is. 

I can say this from my own experience. We men, 
who sit at the feet of the Master, do not overlook 
death in living our lives. No. Just as we practice 
the presence of God, we practice the presence of 
death. We do not put off death to the last moment. 
We die in advance. We forecast death. We antici- 
pate death. In thought I have died often; and have 
closed my life with the words of the Master: " Fa- 
ther, into Thy hands I commend my spirit." I have 
died in advance; hence death cannot take me un- 
awares. 

PROPHETS. 

The great prophets of the actual: Coleridge, 
Wordsworth, Carlyle, Browning, Tennyson, Ruskin, 
Whittier. Victor Hugo is at his best in the descrip- 
tion of the battle of Waterloo. 

Isaiah: few writers have equalled his gift of ex- 
pression and illustration. He argues by pictures and 
convinces by his array of facts. He makes truth 
glow with a new fire. He makes powerful and per- 
suasive use of questions. His book is a masterpiece 
of fascinating style. He has written some of the 
greatest chapters of the Bible. He is a great in- 
fluence in style. In literature he is among the im- 
mortals. He was one of the kings of speech. 

Ezekiel's "Quadruple Man" means progress, — 
man, ox, lion, eagle. Master of thought, i. e., man; 



EELIGION 



93 



master of field, i. e., ox; master of the desert, i. e., 
lion; master of the air, i. e., eagle. Nothing is for- 
gotten. Not a string is wanting in his lyre. 

Revelation comes through our experiences. Ex- 
ample, " The Book of Job." " Isaiah 6." His vision 
was everything to him. Hosea had experience with 
his wife, a tragedy of bitter years. It makes his 
book, his message to Israel. 

THE JEWS. 

What made Israel a peculiar people was their be- 
lief that God is the ideal of human conduct and char- 
acter. " Be ye holy for I am holy." 

As a matter of fact, Israel's fruitful period intel- 
lectually was not coincident with its dominance by 
Csesar, but with its openness to foreign influence. In 
the time of Moses, Israel was a composite people. 
Canaan had stood near Babylonian influence for one 
thousand years before the Hebrew conquest; and had 
become saturated with Babylonian ideas. Into the 
heritage Greece entered. Hebrew literature before 
Christianity is not the product of pure Hebrew 
genius, but of that genius fertilized by contact with 
the civilization of the ancient Orient. The period of 
the prophets, the high- water mark of Hebrew litera- 
ture, was the time of the Assyrian domination and of 
Syrian and Egyptian alliances, when Israel was ex- 
posed to the most varied foreign cultural influences. 
The Babylonian captivity, when Israel was absent 
from its land, was an era of intense literary activity. 

The reaction against everything foreign began 
then, too, and so far as it succeeded the nation be- 



94 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



came intellectually sterile. Instead of the various 
messages of the prophets, we have such literary gems 
as the seventh chapter of Numbers, the nine first 
chapters of Chronicles, the dreary ritual formulas of 
the priestly code, the post-exilic prophets, Haggai, 
Zechariah, and Malachi, who lived in Palestine but 
had no message, except " build the Temple and do 
Temple service." The post-exilic historical books, 
Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther show a pitiful lack of 
historical insight and penetration in contrast with the 
pre-exilic histories. 

Not in the Holy Land, but in Egypt, where the 
Jewish intellect was quickened by contact with Greek 
philosophy did Jewish writers after the exile make 
great contributions to the world. 

PURITANISM. 

The Puritans did not go back on beauty. They 
went back on what beauty was made to serve. Art is 
language. It came speaking the abominable doctrines 
of oppression. The more beautiful it was, the more 
dangerous it became. The Puritan lived in an age 
where the Priest and the King had long been served 
by art. I doubt if in Cromwell's day there was a 
picture on the globe that had anything for the com- 
mon people. The world's victories had all been 
King's victories. Art was busy crowning monarchs, 
or robing priests, or giving passions a garment of 
light for mischief. Will any man point to a picture 
of the wonderful numbers that Raphael painted or 
designed that has in it a sympathy for the common 
people? Those are all hierarchic or monarchic. 
Michael Angelo was at heart a republican. He loved 
the people's liberty and hated oppression. Yet what 



EELIGION 



95 



single work of his records these sentiments? The 
gentle Correggio rilled church, convent, and cathedral 
dome with wondrous riches of graceful forms: but 
common life found no sign of love, no help, no cham- 
pion in him. No, the rich man had artists, priests 
had artists, but the common people had none. In 
this prodigious wealth of picture, statue, canvas, and 
fresco, I know nothing that served the common peo- 
ple. What had the Puritan to thank art for? It 
pled for the oppressor. It deified the hierarchy. It 
clothed vice in radiant glory. Every cathedral was 
to him a door to Rome. Every altar-piece was a 
golden lie. When the Puritan broke the altar, it was 
never the carving that he hated, but the idea carved. 

The richest gift of Puritanism to the world of 
literature is its gift of imagination. It gave us 
"Paradise Lost," and "The Pilgrim's Progress." 
Milton was eight years old when Shakespeare died. 
He was born five years after the death of Queen 
Elizabeth. He was the highest of Puritanism. He 
inherited the best things of the Elizabethan age. He 
was the flower of Puritanism. 



V 



II 

CHRISTIAN VIRTUES 

FAITH. 

THERE are many perplexed in faith and pure 
in deed. 
From believing in conscience you come to 
believe in God. Believing in God, you chance one 
day to recognize in the reported words of Jesus the 
notes of Deity. " Never man spake as this man." 

The workmen who began to build the cathedral of 
Cologne, began away back in the thirteenth century. 
They knew that they could not finish it. It took six 
hundred years to do that. It was necessary that the 
men of the thirteenth century should join hands with 
the men of the fourteenth century; yet the men of 
the thirteenth century were perfectly satisfied to quit 
work when the day of their labor had reached its 
evening. They knew that the work would go on, and 
that the architect's ideal would stand before the world 
as it does this day a Psalm of Praise in stone, a Hal- 
lelujah Chorus in crystallized music. 

Believe! believe in virtue, believe in truth, believe 
in honesty, believe in God's law, believe in God. 

We are constantly ringing the changes on the diffi- 
culties of faith. The fact is it is harder not to be- 
lieve than it is to believe. There are more difficulties 
connected with non- faith. 

96 



CHEISTIAN VIKTUES 



97 



You are a fair specimen of a non-Christ man. 
America is a Christ-made Republic. You have not 
been built up independently of Jesus. You have been 
Christianly fed, clothed, housed. It would take three 
or four generations of out-and-out infidel living to 
eliminate from you what Christianity has uncon- 
sciously done for you by means of the Christian at- 
mosphere in which you have been reared. 

Voltaire's religious opinions were almost exactly 
those of the English Non-conformists of to-day. 

There is an Iceland of negatives, and a Yosemite 
Valley of positives. 

May our life be a twenty- third Psalm. Cultivate 
your desires, transfigure them, electrify them, illu- 
minate them, vitalize them, eternalize them. 

Faith and Reason are twin sisters. 

Scientific faith casts out fear. 

Things called for by the instincts of mankind; 
these are religion. Religion calls for the ordering of 
man's faculties. Place the inferior in subjugation to 
the superior. 

What is the religion of democracy? The Gospel 
of efficiency. 

I don't believe I could believe in anything I had to 
believe. Faith made to order, — from that excuse me. 

Faith gives a man leverage over circumstances. 



98 A BOOK OF BEMEMBKANCE 



LOVE. 

Bring fresh love into your life; it will keep your 
life fresh. 

Love celestializes man, his face and form and life. 
It works a fineness into his very features. 

Those we have loved are always glorious mem- 
ories. 

Emotion enriches life; to starve oneself emotion- 
ally is a mistake. 

SYMPATHY. 

Sympathy, that golden key which unlocks the doors 
of the hearts of others. 

Teach us that our sympathies can be educated. 

When Henry W. Grady was hesitating whether to 
remain on a New York newspaper or return to 
Georgia, he decided to go back home because nobody 
in the apartment house in which he lived could tell 
him about the babe whose little coffin was carried 
side by side with him down the stairs. The inhu- 
manity of New York overwhelmed him. 

TRUTH. 

" That is not literally true," you say ; no, it is much 
truer. It is a truth of the heart. 

We are accountable for what we can prevent. The 
silence of intimates often means censure, when from 
strangers it would mean merely unconcern. 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUES 



99 



You know the value of a gem of the first water. 
When you hold it in your hand you hold one of Na- 
ture's bank vaults packed full of wealth. There is 
in it a wealth of beauty and of sparkle. Turn the 
light into it. You will see this. When subjected to 
the light you find yourself looking into a great deep. 
Depth opens beyond depth, as though there were no 
end to the chambers of splendor. Flake after flake 
of luminous color floats up from unseen fountains of 
light that are hidden away in the heart of the little 
stone. A great cardinal truth is such a gem. 

Truth always receives its highest expression in and 
through a person. This Jesus Christ Himself teaches 
when He stands forth and says, " I am the truth." 
Truth in life-form is an authority. In this form it 
commands and is obeyed. It is light and it reveals. 
It makes a man luminous. A Shekinah personality 
like St. Columba: his Shekinah hand made a copy of 
the psalter in the dark. 

Oratory, however polished, and scholarship, how- 
ever plausible, cannot stand before the wrath of an 
indignant man in a righteous cause. 

Hogarth drew the rake and the harlot without 
glorifying their end. 

THE HEROIC HEART. 

As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. What we 
are in the depth of our nature, finds its way into our 
acts. Two boys were going up the stairs of a Cin- 
cinnati factory. There was a pail of naphtha on the 
landing into which one boy threw a lighted cigarette, 
thinking it water. There was a flash of upleaping 



100 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



flames, one boy darted into the street, the other ran 
up the stairs to warn the girls working above, that 
they might escape. Neither boy had time to ponder. 
Each acted instantly, instinctively. One was a cow- 
ard in the depth of his nature, the other a hero; and 
neither of them knew it. The secret of doing right 
lies in the ideas we select to have rule over our minds 
and control our lives. 

The dead engine on the track and the engineer 
who sacrificed himself. He did the one and only 
thing to be done, if the passengers on his train were 
to be saved. He drew the lever and put on a full 
head of steam, such a head of steam as lifted and 
knocked the dead engine off the track. The train 
was saved, but of course he was crushed beyond rec- 
ognition. His heroism told. It saved scores of hu- 
man lives. All the saved sang his praises. One put 
him into a song, another into a picture, and another 
into a beautifully written story. 

As a fortification against loneliness it is necessary 
to have resources in oneself. 

THANKSGIVING. 

We have met this morning, on Easter Day, to cele- 
brate the greatest fact known to mankind, the resur- 
rection of Jesus Christ our Master. We have met to 
talk with the witnesses of this great fact and to feel 
anew the power and adequacy of their testimony. 
This day then is one of the evidences that " He is 
risen." It was named by His name " The Lord's 
Day." It has become the Holy Sabbath because of 
this fact. It has displaced the day which was the 



CHEISTIAN VIKTUES 



101 



Sabbath from the beginning of the world. This in 
itself was a mighty revolution which could not have 
taken place without an adequate cause. For nineteen 
hundred years it has come to mankind with its Easter 
Message that the " Lord has risen, the Lord has risen 
indeed.' , We praise Thee, O God, for the first day of 
the week — the Sabbath, and for its repeated message. 

Easter gives us a fine outlook on the life beyond 
the grave. 

We thank Thee for the record of the experience of 
the sons and daughters of God, for the songs of the 
souls which they have sung; for the vision which 
they saw; for their prayers, for their sorrows and 
consolations and triumphs. They enrich us. They 
warn us. They inspire us. They have ascended to 
employ the ripened energies of their souls in higher 
service. 

Thou hast given us songs to sing, tune our hearts 
so that we may properly sing them. Help us to sing 
them with spirit and soul. 

We thank Thee for the great books of truth out of 
which Thou art speaking to mankind, the book of 
life, human experience, the book of nature, the book 
written by holy men of old, The Bible, the book of 
providence, history. 

Great hymns set to great music, roll against the 
heart and mind of the people. Thus is a religious 
thought climaxed. 

Give us songs to sing that shall thrill through the 
eternities. 



102 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



Our Father, we thank Thee for the message of this 
holy hour; carrying this message with us, we leave 
Thy house full of thanksgiving; singing in our hearts 
the song of faith and confidence. We thank Thee for 
the truth, and for the cause of truth which Thou hast 
established on earth. We thank Thee for the word 
of God, which is contained in the scripture of the Old 
and New Testaments, which teaches us what we are 
to believe concerning God, and what duty God re- 
quires of man. We thank Thee for the succession of 
the Godly. We thank Thee for the men of God who 
live within the lids of the Holy Book, the patriarchs, 
the prophets, the psalmists, and the apostles, and we 
thank Thee for those men of God who live and have 
lived outside the lids of the Holy Book, the lawgiv- 
ers, the poets, the philosophers, the statesmen, the 
scientists, the philanthropists, the great men of all 
races and nations, who have walked with God and 
communed with God and have been His mouthpiece 
to their fellowmen. Thou hast never left Thyself 
without witnesses among men; even in the darkest 
ages, Thou hast had those to whom Thou hast re- 
vealed Thyself and who have spoken for Thee. They 
have always been men who have followed the inner 
light and Thou hast made them leaders of the world. 
We thank Thee for the Christian Church, the pillar 
and ground of truth, to which have been committed 
the oracles of God. We thank Thee for the kingdom 
of God in the world, which is larger and greater than 
the Church, and for the building up of which the 
Church lives and labors. We thank Thee that in this 
Kingdom religion has its largest sway, finding its 
embodiment in righteous laws, in holy humanities, in 
the learned sciences, and in a great Christian civili- 



CHRISTIAN VIRTUES 



103 



zation. We thank Thee for the testimony of science 
to the faithfulness of God to all His principles and 
laws in which He has led mankind to trust. Above 
all, we thank Thee for Jesus Christ, the Son of God, 
" Who is the brightness of the Father's glory and the 
express image of His person." We thank Thee for 
the gospel which He preached, the life which He 
lived, the sacrifice which He made, and the character 
which He built up as an example for man. Make 
and keep us true to Him. Help us so to live that we 
shall be His facsimiles winning men to Him. We 
thank Thee for the Vision Splendid and the Age of 
Gold, which beckon us up and on, the predicted era 
in the future reign of Thy Son when none shall need 
to say unto another, " Know the Lord, for all shall 
know Thee " from the least unto the greatest, the 
years when the sword shall be beaten into the plough- 
share and the spear into the pruning hook, and na- 
tions shall learn the art of war no more, the era when 
all the arts and crafts and industries and pleasures, 
professions and civilization of the world shall be in- 
scribed " Holiness unto the Lord." We offer our 
prayer in the name of the Master to whom be glory 
forever and ever. Amen. 

I sing better after listening to David's harp. 

CRUSADERS' HYMN 

" Fairest Lord Jesus, 
Ruler of Nature! 

Jesus of God and of Mary the Son ! 
Thee w T ill I cherish, 
Thee will I honor, 

Thee, my delight and my glory and crown ! 



104 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



" Fair are the meadows, 
Fairer the woodlands, 
Robed in the flowery vesture of spring; 
Jesus is fairer, 
Jesus is purer, 

Making my sorrowful spirit to sing. 

" Fair is the moonshine, 
Fairer the sunlight, 

Than all the stars of the heavenly host ; 
Jesus shines lighter, 
Jesus shines purer, 

Than all the angels that heaven can boast." 

This hymn was written in the twelfth century and 
sung by the army of the Crusaders who sought to 
recover the Holy Land from the Saracens. There is 
a legend that it was composed by a crusader and was 
found, both words and music, in his helmet as he lay 
dead upon the field. We long to believe the legend 
true. It was the marching music of his life. It gives 
us each a tender vision and makes the hymn live. 
What a stir it made when found. 

We thank Thee for the fellowship of the saints, for 
our communion with regenerated men and women. 
To know these and trust these, and love these, and 
imitate these, and admit these into our lives, is a re- 
ligion in itself. 

We thank Thee for the songs of praise, the songs 
of the soul, which have been gathered from the ages 
of Christian experience. Help us so to use them that 
they will bring us hope and peace and uplift and in- 
spiration. By them may we sing ourselves through 



CHKISTIAN VIKTUES 



105 



the dark valleys of life as our fathers have done be- 
fore us. 

INSPIRATION. 

There are mountain-top moments in every life 
when we see the pattern on the Mount. We see the 
star and take our bearings. In these mountain-top 
moments we are all idealists. God be praised for 
these Heavenly Hills. 

God has given us a number of Bibles; — Nature, 
Providence, Human Consciousness, all are Books of 
God. 

Our lives should be full of transfigurations. 

Our ideals are powers. They ennoble us, purify 
us, inspire us, and fire us with ruling ambitions. 
They beautify, touch and retouch, re-idealize and 
transfigure. 

At the center of life should be worship; the Sanc- 
tuary of God; everything should radiate from that 
center, all the activities, pursuits, arts, education, 
commerce, recreations. That is the secret of a fine 
life. 

Some people's religion narrows their life. May our 
religion not be such. 

There is a golden past as well as a golden future. 

The greatest agency in the known world is Holy 
Love. It celestializes the face, builds up a shining 
personality and lives a shining life. 



106 A BOOK OF EEMEMBRANCE 



Inspiration is not ancient history. The vision 
splendid always dawns. What He was He is. What 
He did He does. What He said He says. God is 
not old. He is as new as the latest apple-blossom. 
Yes, God is equal to another Augustine, another Cal- 
vin, Wesley, Beecher, Brooks, Spurgeon, Emerson, 
Lowell, Tennyson, Browning, Longfellow, Whittier, 
Wagner, Chopin, Mendelssohn, Gladstone, Lincoln. 

How near a man may get to God, and how inti- 
mate he may be with God is shown to us by John and 
Paul and the New Testament saints. 

Browning would have you trust those moments 
when the grand hope seems true to you. 

Jaded nerves cannot thrill. Emotions are seeds, 
just as thoughts are, and just as pictures are. 

Life consists of a sense of values. May we be 
among the twice born, the consecrated, the inspired, 
the pure in heart, that see God and who see as God 
sees. 

Some natures are magnets. " They looked unto 
Him and were radiant." Hawthorne's " Great Stone 
Face." " Ernest was transformed by it." 

If the spirit of Newton, Mendelssohn, Angelo, en- 
tered into you, there would be results. Yes, even so 
the entrance of God's spirit means a man's transfig- 
uration into the image of God. Are you willing to be 
made willing? 

The only men who are pure are the men engaged 
in some lofty pursuit or possessed by a great love- 



CHEISTIAN VIRTUES 



107 



It will not shock any student of comparative re- 
ligions to be told that the God who inspired Jesus in- 
spired also Socrates, and Moses, and Spinoza, and 
Mohammed, et al., and to find some of the loveliest 
sayings of Jesus among the sayings of Confucius and 
Moses. 

SELF-EXAMINATION. 

Let a man examine himself, i. e., take a self -in- 
ventory. 

It is not more light that we need, but more sight. 
Help us to take time to see. 

Men are not broken to pieces from outside misfor- 
tune: they go to pieces on the inside as the result of 
secret disloyalty to the Heavenly Vision which in 
some degree shines upon every soul. 

Hogarth never drew a more useful moral than in 
the cartoon which represents a man in the debtor's 
prison occupying himself with plans for the payment 
of the national debt. 

Talk to your soul, recount its possibilities, hold it 
to its responsibilities, question it about its choices, 
deepen its convictions, give it songs to sing. 

The virtue that is not passionate is of no value. 
Make Jesus Christ your passion. 

Not to have found your formula is not to have 
found yourself and can only be expressed in frac- 
tions, and vulgar fractions at that. 



108 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



Like the dreams of the opium eater, we create our 
own world. 

Give the nerves relaxation through tears. These 
tears are a blessing. First tears come, then sleep. 

Are you a sinner or an ex-sinner ? " Sin is a dark- 
ness of the mind." 

Man is priced by himself. For thirty pieces of 
silver Judas sold himself, not Christ. 

What would a man change in parents, country, 
church, opportunities, results of life? What? 
Would he have chosen to be born at sixty? Does he 
accept the situation as though he were a party to it? 
Does he assent? Every one cannot be Napoleon or 
Bismarck and walk off with the Bells of Notre Dame. 
Every one must bear his own universe. Do you ac- 
cept yourself as you were born? 

The mind tires of everything that is monotonous, 
even of perfect happiness. 

We are stirred and moved this day by reminiscences 
and retrospects. The past lives anew for us. Teach 
us how to gather the lessons of the bygone ages that 
we may be mightily blessed thereby. The changes are 
neither slight nor infinitesimal. There is a thinning 
of the ranks, and differences in those that remain. 
Changes may mean progress but what we have to 
guard against is arrested development. 

Help us to find our lost laughter. 



CHEISTIAN VIKTUES 109 

MAXIMS. 

Tremendous forces are coiled up in the soul. 

May we know love as a divine contagion. 

God is always anticipating glorious transfigurations 
of character. 

There is an education by atmosphere. 

A man of sixty-five is supposed to have sinned all 
his sins, and to have entered on his sainthood. 

Some gain a religious vocabulary rather than a re- 
ligious experience. 

Unbelief has many beliefs. 

Idleness is dishonesty. 

Save us from heresy draped in the costume of 
romance. 

Remember those who are only infidels by mistake. 

Learning is not accumulation; it is assimilation. 

Every intuition of ours is a talk with God. 

It is a responsibility to have somebody fond of you. 

All autobiographies have more or less fiction in 
them. 

Tact is the talent of talents. 

We cannot take the views of others on credit. We 
must rethink them, and make them our own. 



110 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 

There is such a thing as an excess of abstinence. 
With some men it is gilt-edged things every time. 
Don't tempt the future. 

Supreme moods can never be recaptured or re- 
peated. 

Balance is a golden quality. 

Heaven itself could not make some people happy. 

Govern warm impulses with cold reason. 

A halo is the only thing that gives out light yet 
needs no fuel. 

Lack of opportunity discourages ambitions. 

A judicious scepticism is the salt of life. 

When you accept a present you have dissolved the 
pearl of independence in the vinegar of obligation. 

The hour of climax in the path of duty. 

The finest thoughts are those that remain unwrifr 
ten. 

One man with God is a majority. 

Let us oxygenate life with leisure. 

Minds stuffed with facts are not nourished by 
them. 

The Nemesis of Dogmatism is Scepticism. 



OHEISTIAN VIETUES 111 

Formerly men had convictions ; now they have only 
opinions. 

Desire is destiny. Desire cuts a pathway to the 
coveted end. 

God's thoughts are facts. 

The soul is the cardinal beautifier. 

From twenty-five to forty ; the fifteen golden years 
of life. 

To Jesus Christ there are no alien races. 

Generalizations are blank cartridges. 

Purity is not innocence, but conquest, 

Ringing Maxims: it is good to have them. Dull- 
ness is a crime. 

Humor humanizes the truth and makes it compan- 
ionable. 

False names sometimes transfigure sin. 

A vision is not an impromptu affair. 

Fine thoughts are medicinal. 

Beauty is the bride of holiness. 

Limbo should have a large place in theology. 

There are healthy heresies. 

There are intellects that yawn over the Bible and 
Shakespeare. 



112 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 

Great ideas protect themselves; they are imperish- 
able. 

Good taste is a species of religion. 

" Civilization " is simply the secular name for 
" Christianity." 

It is tiresome to be yourself all the time. 

Give your work a soul. 

Man is priced by himself. 

A new thought is a tonic. 

A new thrill means health. 

A new scene is hygienic. 

Like Thoreau, indulge yourself in fine renounce- 
ments. 

Have a hero. A hero is not a luxury but a neces- 
sity. 

Most men need stimulus rather than restraint. 

Service to man is the highest worship of God. 

Masterpieces have never been produced by those 
who have no masters. 

Duty performed is a rainbow to the soul. 

The soul is but the sense catching fire. 

The religions are not alien one to another. They 
are akin. 



CHEISTIAN VIETUES 113 

The young intellectuals are the rulers of to-mor- 
row. 

The Christian life is a life of verbs, L e. f it is a life 
of action, doing. 

Duties are ours; events are God's. 

Aspirations and attainments go together. 

No men are entirely useless; the Vigilance Com- 
mittee can sometimes make use of a man in starting a 
graveyard. 

Many people amuse us exceedingly, who up-their- 
sleeve are amused at us. 

A man who decides there is no future despises the 
present. 

Slander takes on the guilt of the crime alleged. 

The easiest way to provoke a liar is to put him on 
the defensive. 

I sometimes think that life deals too easily with 
most of us to bring out the best that is in us. 

" New Presbyter " is but old " Priest " writ large. 

Vanity is only self-respect multiplied. 

The greatest enemy of to-day is to-morrow. 

A sense of humor is a strong ally. 

The basis of democracy is that all men are entitled 
to see that their neighbors suffer equally with them- 
selves. 



114 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 

Everything in the world is for sale if it can get its 
price. 

Men who live in solitude are tempted daily. 

You can't pigeonhole a big man. 

Conscience is the soul's compass. 

A man who makes no progress, his place is in the 
cemetery. 

The lovers of simplicity, too, can exaggerate. 

Worry is a blunder. Despair is a sin. Sin makes 
a man a coward. Faith makes the weak man a giant. 

Capital is hoarded labor. 

Be a grindstone to dull knives. 

Don't palm off any second-class thing on God. 

The sun shines as gladly on coffins as on cradles. 

A man's enemies are those who extol him for gifts 
he has not. 

Politeness in itself is a power. 

There is nothing so hygienic as friendship. 

I do not believe in " The ring-in-the-nose re- 
ligion." 

Even in liberal Athens there was the cup of hem- 
lock. 

A purposeful man is a good chairman for a pur- 
poseful occasion. 



CHEISTIAN VIETUES 115 

Life without love is a harp without strings. 

With alluring names vices become merely quaint 
little eccentricities. 

It is proverbial that great men have had great 
mothers. 

Honest indignation has the very purity of virtue. 
Divorce is the sacrament of adultery. 
A poor man has but few adherents. 

When a child is born in America he is born in an 
atmosphere of expectation. 

One-fourth of mankind do all the work. 

Rumor has it that there be Americans who are 
never happy unless they are passing themselves off 
for Englishmen. 

Exile makes fast friends. It is only in prosperity 
that we throw our friends overboard. 

Nothing subdues like marriage. 

Men without faults are apt to be men without 
force. A round diamond has no brilliancy. 

No man is greater than his mother. 

A few of us have already died. I have been at 
their funeral. 

Regenerate the theologies and make them Chris- 
tian. 



116 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 

There is no despair like the despair of youth. 
Negatives do not define. 

Etiquette is simply social agreement in living to- 
gether. 

Poets are teachers; experiences are lessons; 
friends are guides; work is a master; love is an in- 
terpreter. 

Linguists are seldom thinkers. 

The tests of manhood, viz., long neglect, and sud- 
den popularity; both tests are searching. 

Ridicule is the most powerful weapon known to 
humanity. 

A man becomes at last what he loves best. 

All generalization is a form of hedging. 

" The Ladies of the Lake ; " Chicago, Cleveland, 
Milwaukee, Detroit, Toledo, Duluth. 

The British make merits of their stupidities. 
Every ambitious man is by nature a gambler. 



Ill 



THE STATE 

PATRIOTISM. 

OUR Republic is God's great loom for the in- 
terweaving of the peoples of the earth. The 
noble men and women forming the different 
races of the old world are the threads of silk and of 
silver and of gold, and the fabric woven is the Ameri- 
can Republic, beautiful with its holy freedom, its con- 
stitutional rights, and its magnificent and elevating 
institutions both civil and religious. 

Death hath starred their names, and like stars 
" God calleth them all by name." 

The hero dies on the battle-field and with his blood 
makes beautiful some flag of liberty. 

Give us the international mind, that mind that har- 
monizes with the Kingdom of God on earth, and that 
seeks and acknowledges the good of the brotherhood 
of mankind. 

A fellowship that is a power; — the two sacraments 
of our nation: the sacred flag and the patriotic song. 

" An honorable sorrow," those are the words which 
Thucydides puts into the mouth of Pericles in his 
great funeral speech for those who have fallen in the 
war. It is an honorable sorrow their parents have 
and " Be comforted by the glory of those who have 
gone." 

117 



118 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKAKCE 



We have a Republic to preserve in this country. 
By making and keeping our Republic what it ought to 
be we can best serve the world. 

The League of Nations is an attempt to apply 
Christian principles to international relationship. In 
the past we have been applying Pagan principles. 

The two things that count in national life: 

(a) A succession of writers of genius. 

(b) The proud memories of great, noble, and 
honorable deeds. 

Cooperation and profit sharing are the only dis- 
tinctive terms of peace. We should organize our 
national resources to the end that our liberties and 
rights may be maintained, and our national obliga- 
tions be fulfilled. Humanity is deeper than nation- 
ality. 

Our patriotism needs vitalizing. What do you 
conceive America to be? We are a fraction of a 
great whole. We have called our country " the melt- 
ing pot of the nations," but we need more fire to melt 
the hyphens. 

A diminution in the world of Anglo-Saxon prestige 
would mean a diminution of American prestige. 
Our nearest kinship is English. We share the 
northern continent of America with her. 

Resolve to die for something infinitely greater than 
life. 

There is a kind of professional patriot. 

National heroes are the best possession of a people. 



THE STATE 119 

STATESMANSHIP. 

The Church should assume the leadership here in 
social reform. 

In our leaders may universal talents be combined 
with great integrity of purpose and purity of life. 

The social movement, — a higher way of looking at 
society, and man's responsibility to and for his fel- 
lowmen. 

A public meeting is necessary to voice the indig- 
nation of the civic conscience. 

The recipe for reforming the world is, " Reform 
yourself." 

Give us the international mind that we may be 
interested in the Lord's work in all lands. 

The savage in Central Africa, the man with no 
language; who is only beginning to emerge from the 
stone age! Yet it is perfectly on the cards that that 
man's son may one day be a Premier in the service 
of the British Empire. 

PEACE AND WAR. 

We can do more for Humanity with the Sermon 
on the Mount than with all the Dreadnoughts and 
armies on which we are wasting our resources. 

How many purposeless men there were in the 
world before the war. 



IV 



SOCIETY 

GREAT LIVES. 

MICHAEL ANGELO invested his life in a 
cathedral — he invested it in St. Peter's, 
Rome; Christopher Wren in St. Paul's, 
London; John Calvin in a system of theology that 
bears his name, a system that has built strong 
churches and great republics; Raphael in gorgeous 
paintings — the Dresden Madonna and the Vatican 
Transfiguration of the Master; Luther in the great 
German Reformation; John Knox in the Scottish 
Reformation. 

A great man is like a diamond that is cut with 
many facets, from any one of which the beauty may 
be seen and appreciated. All the facets cannot be 
seen at once. 

A commanding personality is a dictatorship. 

Anniversaries of notable men rally in us the trait 
to which their career gave emphasis. Holy days and 
holidays are no mere memorials, but indispensable 
opportunities for one's own fulfillment. 

The divine touch of noble natures is a tonic: it in- 
spires. The tonic oxygenizes the blood. Its pleasure 
is the climax of climaxes. It is a miracle of thrill. 
It is a pleasure that cannot be augmented. 

120 



SOCIETY 



121 



To come into contact even in print with one of the 
purest and most exemplary lives is to derive some- 
thing of those qualities which combine to make the 
man a great living force. 

Historic places are places that live: so are historic 
persons: they kindle a keen and fine excitement in 
all who come into contact with them. 

Some men's lives are the home of fair visions, 
noble thoughts, and kind and courteous deeds. 

The more one knows and sees, and the more one 
travels, the more he finds that so-called gifted men 
are but the expression of his own thoughts. 

We thank Thee for the names that are still fra- 
grant in after centuries. 

Give us choice fellowships, picked souls with picked 
thoughts. 

The possibilities of the present, and the prospects 
of the future should commune with the men who are 
doing the work of the world. 

The great dead do not feel the power of West- 
minster Abbey ; but the great living do. Westminster 
Abbey is the promise of a crown of life to those who 
are faithful. It is a promise built into the form of 
massive stone and sculptural marble. 

There are those who focus their life into one word, 
Luther " Faith," R. L. Stevenson " Courtesy," Plato 
"Beauty," John "Love," Jesus "Life." These 
words recall them. They were the key-note of their 
thinking. 



122 AT BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



In all ages the human heart has hungered for 
heroes. It must have some forehead over which to 
break its alabaster box, some feet to wash with its 
tears of love. In Tasso's time when Michael Angelo 
completed the lustrous angels on the ceiling of the 
Sistine Chapel the admiring multitudes tore his 
brushes into fragments for mementoes, and making 
a chariot of their arms, bore the artist home to his 
lodgings. Thus they honored their hero. 

The sound of great old men departing deadens our 
ears to the sound of great young men arriving. 

As a rule men do their best work before they be- 
come famous. 

The world's great assets are its great minds. 

Ruskin wrote, " Lowell does me good in my dull 
fits: he encourages me; he makes me laugh." Lowell 
wrote Longfellow, " You have sung me out of my 
sorrows." 

Ulysses, the best that Greece or Rome offers, was 
a man of action. That is why he takes. Action al- 
ways thrills. 

Alexander the Great always carried with him a 
copy of Homer's Iliad, and Achilles became his ideal. 
Here is the secret of much that Alexander did. It 
was Achilles that made him. 

Is there any one in Westminster Abbey that com- 
pares with Christ? The whole Abbey is His monu- 
ment. 

A little while before he died Francis of Assisi sang 



SOCIETY 



123 



a song which has been called "The Canticle of the 
Sun." It sings only of common things; but it is a 
Psalm of great thanksgiving for life. It rose from a 
bed from which the poor, worn, weary saint could 
never rise, but it soared to heaven a fair memorial of 
one who had tasted life full to the last with a thrill- 
ing joy. 

Pure hero worship is healthy ; it stimulates to hero- 
ism. It gives models of manhood. The better in- 
stincts of the human race have elevated its heroes by 
eloquent eulogies, histories, monuments, and songs. 
This is a healthy return. Remember there are heroes 
of defeat. 

Beecher speaking on U. S. Grant says: " Three ele- 
ments enter into the career of a great citizen: (a) 
That which his ancestry gives, (b) That which op- 
portunity gives, (c) That which his will develops." 

Not only was every sentence of Carlyle ladened 
with intellect, it was ladened with character. 

Gladstone banked on his body. He counted health 
a great asset. Don't waste your nervous capital. 

Saul was a ten-talented man. Browning in his 
poem, Stanley in his story, and Chopin in his 
" Funeral March " have enshrined the young King in 
a mausoleum nobler than one built of marble. Ro- 
mantic indeed this adventurous and many-colored 
career, that began with the sheep-cote, passed quickly 
to the King's palace and ended midst the shock and 
thunder of battle. He begins with the irresistible fas- 
cination that only the greatest possess. Like Aga- 



124 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCB 



memnon, he stood head and shoulders above the peo- 
ple. A fascinating human figure. When he hurled his 
javelin at David, the shepherd boy, he met the con- 
tempt of all brave men. " How are the mighty 
fallen ! " The saddest chapter in literature is the his- 
tory of our ten-talented men, the sons of genius. 

What would not this nation give to-day if Daniel 
Webster, Rufus Choate, and Edward Everett, had 
only refused compromise, stood unflinchingly for 
principle and marched in life straight to defeat which 
would have meant certain victory after death. 

The great roll of great men with whom Gladstone 
was associated shows that his was the age of giants; 
Sir Robert Peel, O'Connell, Macaulay the essayist, 
Grote the historian, Bulwer the novelist, Cobden the 
friend of the common people, John Bright the 
Quaker orator who modelled his speech upon the sim- 
ple style of the Bible and John Bunyan, Disraeli 
whose pastime was novel writing, Lord Randolph 
Churchill, Mr. Balfour the metaphysician, and Lord 
Salisbury the Prime Minister. His was the age 
of giants. Gladstone was of Scotch descent, only an 
Englishman by birth. His father exchanged Leith 
for Liverpool. The Prime Minister once in address- 
ing his constituents in Midlothian expressed his 
pride in the fact that every drop of blood in his veins 
was pure Scotch. The Highlanders are men of large 
stature, brave and brawny, and the iron and granite 
of the Highland mountains found their way into the 
physique of this hero. His was the genius of patriot- 
ism. He was the Christian scholar in politics. The 
most fascinating period of Gladstone's career was be- 



SOCIETY 



125 



tween seventy and eighty-five. What color is to 
Raphael, what music is to Mozart, what philosophy 
is to Bacon, that religion is to Gladstone. He is the 
Christian scholar in politics. 

Socrates rejoiced in his sentence to death because 
through its execution he would escape the decadence 
that attends old age. Socrates no doubt has been 
idealized by Plato. His was a Hellenic life. 

Elizabeth Fry visited all the prisons in England, 
Scotland and Ireland. She was invited to visit the 
prisons of Paris and report. She went to Belgium, 
Holland and Germany. She said to the King of 
France, " Build prisons with the idea of reformation, 
not revenge." She even suggested that he and his 
children might occupy the cells. To Sir Robert Peel 
and his cabinet she read the story of the gallows 
Haman built. She labored for half a century. In 
penology nothing has been added to her philosophy. 

Madame de Stael said of Napoleon, " There is 
nothing for him but himself; all other things are so 
many ciphers." Yes, he was the incarnation of self- 
ishness. Name another woman who touches life at 
so many points as did Madame de Stael. Hers were 
home, health, wealth, strength, honor, affection, ap- 
plause, motherhood, loss, danger, death, defect, sacri- 
fice, humiliation, illness, banishment, imprisonment, 
escape. Then again hope, returning strength, wealth, 
recognition, fame, friends. 

Sir Walter Scott and Turner, the artist, were great 
friends. They took long trips through Scotland to- 
gether, but they did not appreciate each other's work. 



126 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



Scott was ignorant concerning the art of painting. 
He confessed that it was beyond his ken " why peo- 
ple bought Turner's pictures." Turner in his turn 
said: " As for your books the covers of some of them 
are very pretty." Turner's picture of " The Old 
Temeraire," is that of the old warship sold out of 
service being towed away to be broken up. Turner 
immortalized the scene by putting it on canvas. 
About the picture Ruskin writes: "Of the pictures 
not visibly involving human pain this is the most 
pathetic ever painted." The particular ship was 
crowned with victory in the battle of Trafalgar. 

Seven college-bred men composed the cabinet of 
Lincoln. He weighed more than all put together. 

John Calvin was illustrious as a radical. He broke 
away from the reigning spirit of his own time and 
led the spirit of free inquiry. He would be a liberal 
leader to-day no doubt. It was in the man. He lived 
in a day when the King and Priest had more power 
than God. He made God supreme and put King and 
Priest in their proper place. The sovereignty of God 
was his key-note. 

James Russell Lowell was New England at its best. 
He embraced literature as a profession. He did fine 
work in a fine way. He used a silver hammer. He 
belonged to the massive race. 

Livingstone gave a continent to commerce and 
Christianity. He was of Scotland's sturdiest stock, 
and was hammered out on the anvil of adversity. As 
a boy he formed those habits of patient and accurate 
research that made him the ripe scholar he was. In- 



SOCIETY 



127 



terested in the classics, he laid the foundations for his 
study of the dialects of Africa. No discoverer in all 
history ever had such a career. He had five years of 
solitude in the forest, while he traversed the African 
continent. He wrote the story of his travels and ex- 
plorations in order to secure funds for another ex- 
pedition for missionary purposes. The first edition 
of twelve thousand sold in one week for a guinea 
each. Thus he went back. He aimed to destroy the 
slave trade. It was in 1871 that his faithful Susa 
came crying, " Master, a white man comes." In an- 
other moment he had grasped the hand of Stanley, 
sent out by the New York Herald to find Livingstone. 
He died on his knees praying for Africa. 

When we call the roll of great men with whom 
Gladstone was associated, we see that his was indeed 
an age of giants. He stood forth the first statesman 
of the Victorian era. At eighty-five he wrote " The 
Impregnable Rock of Holy Scriptures." His crown- 
ing characteristic was his intellectual hospitality. 

Lessing writes in his diary: " I will spin myself in 
for a while, like an ugly worm, that I may be able 
to come to light again as a brilliant-winged creature." 

What imperfect people can do: — Homer was blind 
and so were Milton and Ossian. Epictetus was lame, 
so were Byron, Scott and Lord Kelvin. Plato tells 
us that " The outside of Socrates was that of a satyr 
and buffoon, but his soul was all virtue, and from 
within came such divine and pathetic things as pierced 
the heart and drew tears from his hearers." St. Paul 
was little and frail. He was a highly nervous dy- 
namo. 



128 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



All great truths reach the world through the elec- 
tion and service and ministry of individuals. As a 
single drop of aniline will tint a hogshead of water, so 
has the thought of the world been colored by the Au- 
gustines and the Carlyles and the Kants and the 
Hegels. 

Giordano Bruno was buried alive in Rome a. d. 
1600 by order of the Inquisition for asserting that 
the earth was not standing still, and was not the 
center of the universe. Galileo, one of the greatest 
astronomers, was imprisoned for the same cause, the 
Pope ordering that all the books asserting the motion 
of the earth be burned. 

Socrates, says Plato, was the " Gad-fly " of the 
Athenian people pricking intellectual lethargy, forc- 
ing people to think. That he should have made ene- 
mies, that he should have been misunderstood, that he 
should have been accused of undermining the founda- 
tions of morality and religion is natural and intel- 
ligible enough. There were thirty days between his 
sentence and execution. 

John Howard Payne wrote many plays, also he 
wrote the song " Home Sweet Home." Yet he who 
set to music one of the strongest emotions felt by 
humanity was a wanderer most of his life. He was 
born in New York City and is buried at Tunis, which 
overlooks the ruins of Carthage. 

Thomas Carlyle was the oldest of nine children. 
He proved recalcitrant to the faith of his fathers. 
"A great man, but an infidel. ,, He was educated for 
the Kirk. One of America's great men said in a 



SOCIETY 



129 



speech : " From Scotch manners, Scotch religion and 
Scotch whiskey, good Lord deliver us." Scotch man- 
ners remind me of chestnut burrs, not handsome with- 
out but good within, for when you have gotten be- 
yond the rough exterior of Sandy, you generally find 
a heart warm, tender and generous. You do not need 
to eat the burr of the chestnut. There are those who 
blame and berate Carlyle. His was the masculine 
mind. Jane Welsh Carlyle had capacity for pain, 
as it seems all great souls have. When she died 
Thomas Carlyle was alone, and oh, the loneliness that 
was his. It was heart-breaking. He cursed curses 
which were prayers. 

PERSONALITIES. 

To know one beautiful soul is almost a religion in 
itself. 

" In God and Godlike men I put my trust." 

The touch divine of noble natures: it tones: it in- 
spires. 

So far as the voices of God are concerned, there are 
no silent centuries. It seems as if once in a while 
God sends into the world a human soul so beautiful 
that it is at once a revelation of Himself and of our 
possibilities. 

When George Adam Smith undertook to write the 
biography of Henry Drummond, many felt that it 
was like the attempt to capture a sunbeam or to im- 
prison a fragrance. The personality of such a man 
is a rich gem into which God can pour the light of 



130 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



the Gospel and get it back in a prismatic life in flash- 
ing colors that charm and thrill. 

Personalities absorb characteristics from surround- 
ings as flowers absorb colors from the light. 

Men of the Elijah strain; they live intensely; they 
make crises ; they carry occasions with them wherever 
they go ; they close their life by going to heaven in a 
chariot of fire. 

An enthusiast: a man of this type has life in him- 
self ; and he has it so abundantly that he can commu- 
nicate it to others. 

The study of mankind is one of perennial interest. 

Jesus Christ is the Master Personality. 

The lines on some men's faces deepen to crevices. 

It is a common thing for one man to live in another 
man. There are men who rule and electrify others. 
They have throbbing and enthusiastic natures and 
they inspire their fellows. Such a man was Arnold 
of Rugby, who died and left no successor. He in- 
spired multitudes of men. He so entered into his 
pupils that he formed from one-third to one-half of 
many a man. 

We are made by others and that more than we 
dream. We admit others into our lives. We devour 
others. We assimilate others. We embody others; 
we live others; this is true of the very greatest of 
men, and of the most self-contained and self-suffi- 
cient. To illustrate: I suppose you would call Goethe 



SOCIETY 



131 



a great man — a self-contained man — yet who was 
Goethe? He was a combination-man, a human com- 
posite. In reading his biography I notice that this 
one thing occurs again and again when special 
growths in him are recorded: At this time I met So- 
and-so of eminence, and he was of special service to 
me. That is, certain great men coming into Goethe's 
life brought their greatness with them and contrib- 
uted to the up-making of Goethe. Thus Goethe grew 
by his intellectual fellowships. 

All values finally go back to the riches of some per- 
sonal life. 

The consciousness of one's own force is a fine 
qualification. 

Save and use that man of splendid powers going to 
waste. 

Each generation brings a new breed of noble men 
and women into the world. 

It is personal charm and talent that make a man 
live in human memories. 

The man who can give inspiration to the men he 
meets is a success. 

A new person is a great event. 

You can edit a man's conversation by the way you 
listen to it. There are editors of conversation. They 
admire; they censure; they italicize; they enlarge. 

A luminous personality sees things by means of 
himself. 



132 A BOOK OF KEMEMBEANCE 



There are men who create a personal spell. They 
are possessed of inexhaustible resources; they create 
an atmosphere; they really give themselves; they in- 
fect men by their magnificent faith ; they rule by their 
spirit of self-sacrifice. 

John, who lived in the innermost circle of fellow- 
ship and who leaned on the Master's bosom, saw and 
heard things hidden from the other Apostles. 

While Goethe lived contemporary millions bore 
within them sparks from his soul and were kindled 
anew. In Napoleon's life nearly the whole period 
was penetrated by the force of his spirit. A Goethe, 
a Schiller, a Napoleon, a Luther still live among us 
thinking and acting in us. 

John was the Plato of Gospel philosophy. 

Personality is a great factor in one's influence in 
the midst of mankind. It is so constantly asserting 
itself that it dominates others independent of our 
volition. 

A long list of spirits have passed from us, whose 
example was inspirational, whose companionship was 
heartening, and whose services seemed indispensable. 
They were elect spirits. Lord send us their succes- 
sors. 

Rome wanted to hear what Cicero said ; 
Israel wanted to hear what Samuel said; 
Athens wanted to hear what Solon said; 
England wanted to hear what Gladstone said. 



SOCIETY 



133 



There are those in whose society we are better than 
when with others. Their presence is a benediction. 
It has the power to calm, and soothe, and comfort. 
They make us better. The good gains the ascend- 
ancy; the mean, the low and selfish flee away. Their 
faces and their frank, loving eyes carry in them 
strength and the patience of heaven. They educate 
us. They cleanse us. They comfort us. They ele- 
vate us. They vitalize us and they give us larger lib- 
erty. They communicate themselves to us. They 
actually enter into us and live in and through us. 

When the waterdrop fellowships with the sunbeam, 
what? The rainbow, nature's miracle of beauty. 
There is assimilation by contact. The cloud cannot 
look into the face of the sun without being made to 
glow with its splendor. There are men whose at- 
mosphere is electric. 

Aim to do that which shall enrich and inspire your 
generation. The eagle made to look the sun in the 
face fulfilled only the career of a barnyard fowl. 
Why should gifted men claim exemption from right 
living ? 

Many a man is formidably powerful chiefly because 
no one has challenged his power. 

Truth in black ink is not yet equal to truth in the 
eye and in the voice, in man himself. 

When a strong man quits a room he bequeaths a 
sudden silence. 

Some people are absinthe, they exhilarate. 



134 A BOOK OF REMEMBKANCE 



DUTIES. 

We lack stimulating duties. 

Help us to deal with the things that count; to deal 
in acts that give one pleasure in the retrospect; that 
give inner consolation. 

Give us the international mind that we may be in- 
terested in the Lord's work in all lands. 

I am swayed by a consciousness of ought, and 
ought not. 

WORK. 

Work is a precious privilege. 

Work should be worship. The Bible paints on 
gold the picture of Ruth, the far-away Gentile, the 
ancestress of the Messiah. 

The architects who master the great problems of 
stone and steel and wood give us the great structures 
of civilization, temples, cathedrals, aqueducts, bridges, 
universities, warehouses. 

A fine intoxication comes from work well done. 

In Norwich, New York, fifty years ago was a 
young blacksmith ambitious for success. The town 
was small, and he was isolated and shut out from the 
great world of commerce. One day a contractor who 
had agreed to build a barn came and ordered six ham- 
mers, the best David Maydole could make. " Per- 
haps you will not want to pay the price for as good a 
hammer as I can make." " You make a perfect ham- 
mer, and we will not quarrel about the price." 



SOCIETY 



135 



" But," said Maydole, " a perfect hammer means 
three new things that have never been put into any 
hammer. It means that the head must be very hard 
in its temper to drive the nail. It means that the 
claws must be tough to pull out the nail, and that rep- 
resents a different temper in the steel. Then it means 
that the control part must have steel that extends 
along the handle itself, steel that is soft and flexible; 
this means a third kind of temper." David Maydole 
made those six hammers and they were perfect. 
Each hammer turned the carpenter who used it into 
an advertising agent. Without Maydole's knowing 
it, one carpenter spread in New York City the fame 
of the best hammer in the world. Another in Buf- 
falo, another in Boston. Soon Maydole began to re- 
ceive orders for hammers. He never advertised 
them. They made their own way. One day a 
Scotchman came to Norwich, New York. He was 
amazed at the great hammer factory there. When 
men told this traveller that the best hammer in the 
world was made here he scoffed at the idea, insisting 
that there was a hammer made in Great Britain that 
held the first place. He therefore sent an order to an 
old friend in Glasgow to find the best hammer he 
could in England, so that he might meet a wager he 
had made in Norwich, New York. One day the pack- 
age reached the village store and the hour came for 
testing the merits of the Maydole hammer and the 
strange English hammer, and the package was opened. 
But when the package was opened, this hammer that 
had journeyed all the way from England to Norwich, 
New York, was found to bear David Maydole's name. 
It had gone to England to meet the man's demand for 
the best hammer in the world. 



136 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



Mr. Gladstone kept three desks; at one he worked 
on politics, statistics, proposed law; at another desk 
he worked on his literary work, the Greek and Latin 
poets; and religious books he piled on the third desk. 

Liquor mixes badly with printers' ink. Writers 
should be teetotalers. 

Try work when trouble comes; it is an infallible 
cure. 

A mighty group of world powers: The Pulpit, the 
Press, the Stage, the Easel, the Platform. 

Socrates' idea of an educated man was a useful 
man. 

DESIRES. 

Desires are the roots of our personality, our being. 
As they are so are we. They are that which is inner- 
most in man. They make the very core of our being; 
and the core of our being makes us. Jesus compares 
desire to hunger and thirst. Hunger and thirst are 
tremendous powers; they are controlling forces. De- 
sires are controlling forces also. They govern our 
ambitions and our loves, and our lives. When they 
are taken for Christ, they mean our lives taken for 
Christ. Desires are pleasing prophecies. They are 
promises of God in the form of longings, and God 
must be true to His promises. When we see them, it 
is as when we see the eye and the ear. The eye is the 
promise of prophecy of all that is beautiful in color 
and form. It predicts the flowers of spring clad in 
royal garments. It predicts the works of Raphael. 



SOCIETY 



137 



Desire is lasting. Desire cuts the way to success 
and realization. 

God sends us longings to direct us. 

DENUNCIATION. 

Oh, the sins of great cities, especially those of man 
against women! We lament them, O Lord. 

DEFEAT. 

The world is built of broken careers and baffled 
lives, — of tragedies for which there are no explana- 
tions. 

PUNISHMENT. 

God often punishes a man by allowing him to have 
his own way. 

When He hurls a thunderbolt He wraps it up in a 
rainbow, but this does not minimize in the least the 
deadliness of destructiveness of the bolt. 

Make every man ready for his Calvary. 

The misery of some people is so great that there is 
no need of a hell for them. 

" I do not know that God has any right to forgive 
sin." Can a man forgive himself? Hawthorne says: 
" Yes, through repentance and confession." 

Judas did one good thing, but he did not do it early 
enough ; " He went out and hanged himself." 

Transgressions are self-punishing. Our earth is 
too small to make wrong-doing safe. 



138 



A BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE 



HIGH SOCIETY. 

It is hard to have to suffer for the accident of birth 
and family. Pity such. 

Our millionaires. Sons of success! Ah, but of 
these men who have made their pile, one is a dyspep- 
tic, one has hardening of the arteries, etc. " I am 
tired, tired of it all/' They are not half as rich as 
the poor think they are. " Uneasy lies the head that 
wears the crown." It is heart excellence that really 
satisfies. 

WEALTH. 

He had plenty to retire on ; but nothing to retire to. 

There is magic in ownership. 

Money held as a trust for the good of mankind. 

Millionaires who laugh are rare. 

Most enterprises are now in corporate forms. 

There is a genius for saving. 

It is well to distribute your surplus during life. 

" The man who dies rich dies disgraced," the man 
who lives rich lives disgraced. 

To give posterity money at your death is cheap 
benevolence. You keep it as long as you can keep it. 

We need the poor that we befriend as much as they 
need us. 

The best gift of God to nations is the gift of up- 
right men. A land is poor unless its citizens are 
noble. 



SOCIETY 



139 



WOMEN. 

I thank Thee for my godly wife. I owe her for a 
new soul. I learned from her how to overcome my 
old self and seek a new self. 

To Romeo, Juliet was a religion; to Juliet, Romeo 
was the universe. 

Coriolanus called Virgilia, his wife, " My Gracious 
Silence." 

The picture of " The Rope of Ocnus, ,, painted by 
Polygnotus, a distinguished Greek, fifth century b. c, 
sets forth profitless labor. It was a picture of a man 
weaving a rope of straw, while behind him a donkey 
ate the rope as fast as he wove it. The wife of Ocnus 
saw the point, and through her subsequent frugality 
her husband rose to a position of great prosperity. 

Delilah spoiled Samson of his supremacy and man- 
hood; Cleopatra spoiled Mark Antony. 

Laura lends purity to Petrarch. Beatrice lends 
light to Dante. Highland Mary lends music to Burns. 
Elizabeth Browning lends maturity to Robert Brown- 
ing. 

«» 

Aristotle again and again insists on the inferiority 
of women. "A woman is necessarily an evil, and he 
is a lucky man who catches her in the mildest form " 
(Euripides). 

It is probable that in no period of human history 
has more pains been taken with the education of 
women than was taken in Greece. In all the accom- 



140 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



plishments of learning women were highly educated; 
in music, in the dance, in poetry, in literature, in his- 
tory, in philosophy, provided they were to live the 
lives of courtesans. The fact is simply astounding 
that in the age of Pericles intelligence and accomplish- 
ments were associated with impudicity and were signs 
of it. This throws a sidelight on Paul's teaching on 
woman, in his Epistle to Timothy. Timothy was 
Bishop of the Greek Churches in Asia Minor. Hence 
Paul's limitation placed on women. Knowing full 
well the public sentiment of the times, Paul says: 
" Suffer not a woman to teach in your assemblies." 
" Let the woman keep silence." Why? Because the 
people would say, this is done of licentiousness, 
women are teaching. Public sentiment would have 
drawn wrong conclusions. The Bible honors women 
as no other book. It gives her the highest station. 
It puts no limitation on woman's rights, her function, 
her position. She actually was public in the sense of 
honor and function. She went unveiled if she 
pleased. She partook of religious services and led 
them. She was a judge. She was even a leader of 
armies. You will not find either in the Old Testa- 
ment or New Testament one word that limits the 
position of women till you come to the writings of the 
Apostle Paul about Grecian women, for only in Cor- 
inthians and First Timothy you find restrictions. 

Cleopatra was intellectual, accomplished, beautiful, 
and fascinating. Her father was a Ptolemy — 69 b. c. 
By birth more of a Greek than African. The Ptole- 
mies descended from one of Alexander's generals. 
She had a hold on Antony for fourteen years. Csesar 
and Antony were the masters of the world. 



SOCIETY 



141 



The prophet spoke of something, " passing the love 
of women," but the prophet was wrong, there is noth- 
ing that does. Some one has written "A woman's 
love is a dog's love," the dog that craves naught else 
but the presence of his master, who is faithful to the 
death, whines out his life on his master's grave, wait- 
ing for a caress that never comes and the cheery voice 
that is never heard. That's the way a woman loves. 
Do you remember how Nancy Sykes crawls inch by 
inch to reach the hand of Bill, and reaching it, ten- 
derly caresses the coarse ringers that a moment before 
clutched her throat, and dies content? That is the 
love of woman. 

COMPANIONSHIP. 

Companionate with the right people. There are 
people that give you the blues. 

The secret of my life. I have a friend; he is a 
princely man in character and in thought; he is a 
knightly soul, fearless and loving; a gifted personal- 
ity; he himself is the best message, and he has a 
genius for friendship. 

Friendship is God's conception of Christianity. 

Human nature is susceptible to human influences ; 
hence we must look after our associations and keep 
in close touch with God's people. We must people 
our lives with holy presences which refine; Joshua 
must live with Moses; Elisha with Elijah; Ruth with 
Naomi; and Timothy with Paul. The atmosphere is 
electric. So far as the voice of God is concerned, 
there are no silent centuries. 



142 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



Our soul friends regale us. The touch of noble 
natures stimulates, tones up, inspires, — it is an added 
life. 

We hunger and thirst for the society of some peo- 
ple. The place where we fellowship becomes a holy 
place. 

Greek legend and history resounds with the praises 
of friends, Achilles and Patroclus, Pylades and Ores- 
tes, Solon and Peisistratus, Socrates and Alcibiades. 

ELOQUENCE. 

The audience must be prepared for the climacteric 
speech, as well as the speaker. Example, D'Annun- 
zio's address at Rome on the return of the Italian rep- 
resentative from the Paris Peace Conference relative 
to the Fiume affair. It produced a great effect on 
the audience. Why? Because the audience was a 
crowd already thrilling with emotion when his right 
words were uttered. His picture of the marching 
legions of the dead was beautiful. They were more 
than admired ; they were felt. 

Mr. Bryan's " Cross of Gold " speech produced 
such an effect that the audience went frantic and car- 
ried him on its shoulders around the Convention Hall. 
He spoke the words that filled his purpose. 

Henry Ward Beecher in the course of an anti- 
slavery speech seized some shackles that had once fet- 
tered a slave, threw them on the floor and stamped 
upon them, and the audience went mad. The audi- 
ence was ready. If it had not been, the action would 



SOCIETY 



143 



have fallen flat. It would have been laughable and 
ridiculous. 

Oratorical devices have often failed because of the 
audience. See that your audience is prepared. Wake 
it up before you fire your sky-rocket; then your ad- 
dress will not only be admired, — it will be effective. 

It is the function of eloquence to enlighten the un- 
derstanding, to please the imagination, to stir the 
powers, to influence the will. Now a man who can 
do this is a man of power. 

There is always a persistent demand for good 
speaking. The speaker must learn his craft as thor- 
oughly as a painter, a sculptor, or a musician. That 
is what Lord Chesterfield taught. 

Three notable speeches in American History: Pat- 
rick Henry's at Williamsburg, Wendell Phillips' in 
Faneuil Hall, Abraham Lincoln's at Gettysburg. 

A scientific lecturer once asked Huxley: "With 
how much knowledge of the subject should a speaker 
credit his audience ? " Huxley replied not unkindly 
but tersely, " Credit it with nothing." 

CONVERSATION. 

Don't talk to me about the weather. When people 
talk to me about the weather, I always feel certain 
that they mean something else. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

Your pure white paper, a few stages back, was a 
clot of rags. But your note-paper is not a rag. A 



144 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



wonderful process has intervened. Your snowdrop, 
your Easter lily, your white rose, a few stages back 
were earthy brown root-bulbs, soil, manure, but a 
process has come in between: and now what was un- 
lovely and soiling to the sense is fit for the King's 
palace. 

A man should be very Christian towards his own 
self. 

Progress can be made only through struggle. 
There are things darker than death. 

Many chemical compounds, including souls, change 
their behavior and expose their secret identities when 
they meet the right reagent. 

We need the fine gift of discrimination, the instinct 
of omission, a penetrating insight. We have not yet 
attained our growth. 

The new ideal of strength is self-restraint. 

A vision is not an impromptu affair. Let us strive 
to people our lives with lovely presences that refine, 
to look after the raptures which thrill us, to fill our- 
selves with inward forces that purify. Let us make 
ourselves careful relative to the thoughts we think, 
the intuitions we trust, the principles we hold, the 
purposes we cherish, the volitions of our wills, the 
dictates of our consciences, the loves we allow to sway 
us, the visions we entertain. If they be Godlike — 
they will make us Godlike. 

Our passions rule us — when they are killed we are 
left without initiative. We need an electric atmos- 



SOCIETY 



145 



phere — the touch of other vital lives — the men and 
women of the Book. We need to live amid the influ- 
ences of a set of stimuli which rouse us to action. 

The moral value of a man is in ratio to his faculty 
of admiration. Our admirations make us. 

We can develop the instinct of right choice; the 
passion for accuracy. We can delight and enrich the 
magnetism; refine the taste; and mold and shape the 
character. 

Let us free ourselves from encumbering luxury, 
from every self-indulgence that consumes thought, 
energy, time, means, that could be better employed. 
To what extent do people feel that we are at their dis- 
posal, so that they can draw upon us for sympathy, 
counsel, inspiration, assistance as though we were a 
bank account standing in their name? How much is 
our soul in touch with other souls ? 

Work out the beautiful visions of your soul, as did 
Fra Angelico upon the background of gold, and make 
the gold more golden. 

The florist knows how to specialize the sun ; and so 
makes it bring forth exquisite' forms, and colors, 
which the sun would never create without his inter- 
position and specializing. He adopts ways and means 
to let the sun know that he wishes his beams to do 
special service for him, and give him colors that fairly 
burn; and the sun responds to his specializing. 

Of a famous artist it was said, " He no longer 
lives; he repeats himself. " Ah! that is the peril, if 
one be not continually born anew. 



146 A BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE 



The young girl went to hear Ruskin and came out 
from his lecture an artist. The college lad enters the 
university, and straightway he is born into a new 
world of science and literature. 

Michael Angelo carried his school satchel all his 
life. He was always a learner. 

A stimulating atmosphere, what is it? Well — an 
atmosphere of expectation is stimulating. Expecta- 
tion is educational, it is a powerful developer. 

St. Matthew is very fond of the word apart. 
Great strength is conserved in solitude. The " apart- 
men " of the world: Jesus, John the Baptist, Moses, 
Daniel, Jeremiah, Dante, Darwin, Hawthorne, all 
men with a burning passion for retirement. St. 
Francis, Loyola, St. Teresa, Thomas a Kempis, John 
Woolman, Fenelon, Rutherford, George Herbert, a 
long glorious chosen band on whom the Spirit came. 
Which is it with us — rush or repose ? 

To endure slowness is the hardest thing we have 
to do. This is discipline. It is the most burden- 
some part of hardness. It is one of the most exact- 
ing tests of character. When we have to bury aspira- 
tions which we had prepared for coronation, when we 
see the failures of ambition, then the finest enthusi- 
asms will turn cold. 

Every night hundreds of migratory birds, dazzled 
by the light after darkness, fall victims to the Statue 
of Liberty standing at the head of New York Bay. 
That is what is taking place in the world to-day. 
Blinded by the torch of liberty people are dashing 



SOCIETY 147 

themselves to pieces against the light as they come out 
of darkness. What is needed is a sunrise upon the 
world. The sunrise of the Cross of Christ. 

There are zeniths in a man's life after which he 
gradually declines. 

How can Christian style be devoid of beauty? 
Like the style of the Scriptures, it should show the 
fringe of gold and fire which borders revelation. 

Our reputations are weeds in the soil of ignorance. 
Cultivate that soil and they will flower more beauti- 
fully. 

YOUTH AND AGE. 

Youth is a state of mind, not a thing of years. 

I am old. What does that matter? I have served 
my generation. 

It is our sins that age us; our self-denials keep us 
young. 

Observe the rich tones of a calm old man. 

A man's usefulness is gone only when he ceases to 
grow. Age is not so much a matter of increasing 
years as it is of waning enthusiasm. 

Keep renewing your youth. Live amid the influ- 
ences of a set of stimuli. This will rouse you. 

A man grows old because he does old things. 

Partial paralysis and partial eclipse, these are what 
make old age so hard to bear. 



148 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



What is a pleasant youth but a happy ignorance? 

To the youth death is ignored. It is all life and 
the aspirations of life, and the deep constant call to 
life, and the beckoning of life. 

An old man spends his days dreaming of a well- 
spent life. 

Must old age be interpreted to mean that we shall 
have no more grand work from him? Not at all. 
Cato mastered the Greek language after he was 
eighty. It was after eighty that Tennyson wrote his 
famous poem " Crossing the Bar." He wrote it one 
fine October morning when he was in his eighty-first 
year. He showed it to his son, who said, " Father, 
this is the crown of your life-work." He answered, 
" It came in a flash." As Tennyson was an infinite 
painstaker, he worked it over and over and finally 
gave it to the world as a finished product. 

The old can be as impertinent as the young. Im- 
pertinence is equally unbearable in both. 

Most young people outgrow their sins. 

In old age accustom yourself to being a nobody. 

Daylight has no mercy on old age and ruins. 



V 



MARRIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 

THE WEDDED STATE. 

IN marriage when love is lost duty remains. 
It is by divine invitation that we enter it. 
May we enter it in harmony with Thy pur- 
poses, that Thy will may be done and divine results 
may be rendered, and immortal souls called into being, 
and the home built up and filled with the covenant 
seed, where men shall worship daily at the family 
altar. 

Some men one hundred per cent, male; some 
women one hundred per cent, female. 

Love sanctifies its every impulse and proposal and 
baptizes it with the name of chastity. Without love 
the same acts and proposals would be unchastity even 
though according to the reigning laws. 

Marriage should be regarded as a career rather 
than a livelihood. 

A husband is an occupation. 

A single standard of morals for both men and 
women pays dividends. 

Plato's Republic was for a specific class, soldier- 
citizens. Marriage was the means of producing le- 
gitimate children. That is how it is defined by De- 
mosthenes. 

149 



150 A BOOK OF REMEMBEANCE 



Dr. Dixon's voice shook as he declared, "All the 
honor that comes to me is due to my wife. The quiet 
little body who has been at my side whispering words 
of comfort and hope and strength. You have seen 
very little of her. Her idea of a pastor's wife is to be 
a leader of nothing, but a helper in everything." 

Greek women were especially trained for marriage. 
Yet there were here and there ideal matches, an ex- 
ample, — Odysseus and Penelope, the wife waiting 
twenty years, wooed in vain by suitors, she wasted 
her substance and wearied in her life till at last the 
wanderer returned. Also Hector and Andromache 
and their babe. 

There are as many unhappy one-love alliances as 
loveless marriages. 

A noble husband is a friend, a support, another self. 

There is a good deal of wear and tear even in a 
happy marriage. 

FATHERS AND MOTHERS. 

It seems that once in a while God sends into the 
world a human soul so beautiful that it is at once a 
revelation of Himself, and of our own possibilities, 
i. e., a mother. 

What would the world do without its sweet lulla- 
bies — the songs born of the mother-heart? You 
might as well ask it to do without its Madonnas of the 
brush as do without the lullabies of the Harp. They 
help to make the mother-world. They are great as- 
sets. 



MAEEIAGE AND FAMILY LIFE 151 



Great mothers are the handmaids of the spirit. 

Help parents to leave the mark of their Christian 
faith upon their sons and daughters. 

A mother who had lost her only child used to sit 
for hours pressing to her heart Plutarch's divinely 
tender letter to his wife on the death of his own little 
one. It was as if she felt her babe again in her arms. 

No man can deceive his children; they take his 
exact measurement even when others do not. The 
only way to hold the respect and love of your children 
is to be frank, simple, and honest. 

CHILDREN. 

A refreshing dash of childhood — this is what we 
receive at Christmas time. 

The laughter of the children is as the sound of the 
music of golden bells. 

Maybe Providence knew what it was about when 
it brought children into life by the cruel path. 

The love of children is the one steady, unswerving 
passion among people. 

If these bridge-playing, childless people could only 
observe what joy children bring into life! 

Children do not know that they have opened the 
great golden door into life. 

Parents send their children to boarding-school 
when the children most need home. How are chil- 
dren to make homes if they do not know what good 
homes are like? 



VI 



HISTORY AND TRAVEL 

HISTORY. 

THE culture-value of history is of first impor- 
tance. History is a record of the activities 
of God Himself. 

We are laden with formulas and dead men's opin- 
ions, prejudices, and ignorances that ought to have 
been buried with them. 

New times need new men. 

The advantage of living in the twentieth century is 
this: we possess the riches of all the centuries. His- 
tory teaches us our indebtedness to the past. We in- 
herit a trust. We possess nothing more valuable 
than history. History broadens human life by bring- 
ing the life of one into touch with the life of all. 
History makes us familiar with the shining footprints 
of God who walks eternal among the ages. History 
warns, instructs and reveals the issue of moral prin- 
ciples when they are acted out in life. It lays at our 
feet the attainments and ideals of those who have 
gone before. 

Burke said, "You cannot bring an indictment 
against a nation ; " yet within a generation men began 
to draw indictments against whole epochs. 

152 



HISTOEY AND TEAVEL 153 



We go far to look upon the Obelisks, the Egyptian 
Temples and Assyrian monuments; but we use words 
every day, every-day words, which Max Miiller has 
said are more memorable than the most ancient me- 
morials surviving in the modern or ancient world. 
The humblest believer in historical Christianity lives 
under ordinances, and worships through symbols 
which were hoary with age long before our most an- 
cient cathedrals were built. 

Gossip? But what is history but gossip about 
folks who are dead ? 

Beck, in the year 1835, resigned his position in the 
Patent Office because he had come to the conclusion 
that the last invention had been made and the Patent 
Office would be closed. 

America is the last word of modern history, as 
Greece was the last word of ancient history. 

Americanism is a revival of Hellenism. We are 
as our ideals. 

Each prophet of Israel stands forth in his own in- 
dividuality and is the center of a wide and interesting 
historic circle. Shining singly each one is a brilliant 
star, but grouped together they are what De Costa 
calls " a solar system of God." They were great in 
the ages back when contemporary nations produced 
men of immortal renown, for example, when Homer 
was putting the story of his nation into undying verse, 
and when Lycurgus was framing laws for Sparta, 
Jonah was preaching the mercy of God to the Gentiles 
and saving the great city of Nineveh. He was mak- 



154 A BOOK OF KEMEMBRANCE 



ing a history worthy to be written by the pen of God. 
While Romans were building Rome, Isaiah and 
Micah and Nahum were building up the Kingdom of 
Judah in righteousness and thus giving it perpetuity. 
While ^Eschylus, the theologian of heathendom, was 
laying down the system of ethics for the Greeks, Hag- 
gai and Zechariah were breathing spiritual life into 
the Jews and giving them nerve power and the heart 
force to lift their temple from its ashes and make it 
once more the pride of Jerusalem. While Socrates, 
the reformer of heathendom, was trying to purify his 
people and while he was dying a martyr for his faith, 
in Athens, Malachi was putting the Jewish nation into 
the furnace that he might burn out of it all the dross 
and make it even then pure gold. The Hebrew 
prophets were grand men, and that in the ages which 
produced grand men. They towered amid conspicu- 
ous contemporaries. They were magnificent person- 
alities. Confucius, the sage of China, was admired 
by one-third of the earth at a time when one of those 
tidal waves of reason swept the world, when nations 
were full of unrest. It was just previous to the 
blossoming of Greece. Pericles was seventeen years 
old when Confucius died. Themistocles was prepar- 
ing the way for Pericles; for there was being pre- 
pared the treasures of Delos, which made Phidias and 
the Parthenon possible. During the life of Confu- 
cius lived Leonidas, Miltiades, Cyrus the Great, Cam- 
byses, Darius, Xerxes. And then quite naturally 
occurred the Battle of Marathon and Thermopylae. 
Then lived Buddha, Gautama, Lao-tsze, Ezekiel, Pin- 
dar, and iEschylus. 

The driving of the Huguenots from France came 



HISTORY AND TEAVEL 155 



near bankrupting the land, and the flight of the Jews 
and Huguenots and other refugees into England 
helped largely to make England the clearing-house of 
the world. Take the Quakers, Puritans, Huguenots 
from America, and it is no longer the land of the 
free and the home of the brave. Of seven presidents 
who presided over the deliberation of the Continental 
Congress in Philadelphia three were Huguenots, 
Henry Laurens, John Joy, and Elias Boudinot. 

It has been said a thousand times, but falsely, that 
the North sold out, and having realized on their 
slaves, invested in liberty as a better-paying stock. 
This statement is absolutely untrue. The North 
emancipated its slaves. It set them free. This was 
certainly so in the State of New York. No man was 
permitted to take a slave out of New York without 
giving a bond for his return, and if he came back 
without him, unless he proved that the slave had died, 
he was himself made a criminal. The South printed 
a black-list of the Abolitionists of New York City. 
The South undertook to boycott the North. 

Palestine has more history to the square inch than 
any other country on the face of the globe. Greece 
with its Athens, Egypt with its Alexandria, Italy with 
its Rome, Assyria with its Babylon, are not to be 
named the same day with Palestine and its Jerusalem. 

Great ages are often brief. The age of Pericles 
was 431 B. c. to 400 b. c. — thirty years. 

It is believed that the Hindus entered India not 
later than 3000 b. c. and that part of their literature 
dates back twenty-four hundred years before the 



156 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



Christian Era. The " Rig Veda " is one of the oldest 
and most interesting literary monuments. It is of 
noble substance and of eloquent form. The thousand 
and more hymns which it contains were composed 
during a period of not less than one thousand years 
and by a great number of poets. It is like the Hebrew 
Psalter. " Rig " means praise and " Veda " means 
highest wisdom, i. e., these hymns are the highest 
knowledge and experience turned into adoration and 
praise. The Hymns had been handed down from 
generation to generation, before they were reduced to 
writing. They were the intellectual treasure of the 
race. The Vedic Hymns were sung in the valley 
of the Indus centuries before the Ionic Greeks 
were reciting the stories of the Trojan War. They 
express the omniscience of God in these words: 
" He, Himself, has a thousand eyes." And take this 
prayer: "Where life is free in the third Heaven of 
Heavens, where worlds are radiant, there make me 
immortal." 

Of all the world's romances the British Empire's 
is the supremest and best. Without question it is the 
most sublime fact in human affairs. Nothing can 
equal its history. It not only conquers, but it suc- 
ceeds in reconciling to its rule. In India seventy-five 
thousand British hold dominion over three hundred 
million Easterners of varied nationalities. 

The Greek epic was an evolution. The story of 
the taking of Troy passed from man to man and from 
generation to generation. Gradually other stories 
were incorporated into the original tale: the gods 
were involved ; it was amplified ; new incidents were 



HISTOEY AND TEAYEL 157 



added; the chief actors were more and more dramat- 
ically expanded by poet, priest, reciter, as they added 
touches of imagination or enriched it with some vivid 
characterization. Gradually all anterior Greek life 
was drawn upon to expand and embellish it, so that it 
became a veritable true epitome and compendium of 
Greek thought about the gods and nature, and them- 
selves, i. e.y a real bible of their faith, their fancy and 
their history. The story at first had no home but the 
memory. It grew insensibly as it passed from mind 
to mind. It was the growth of popular life. The 
epic is a narrative. It abounds in episodes. 

In the brilliant developments of civilization in the 
zone of the Mediterranean, Egypt, Palestine, Greece, 
Italy, we have a world of human life that fascinates. 

That bright spot in history called "The Age of 
Pericles " was simply a lull in the war spirit when 
Greece turned her attentions from war to art and 
beauty. 

The American Revolution idealized to the English 
mind was the suppression of rebellion and the main- 
tenance of British dominion ; to the American mind it 
was the defense of liberty, resistance to tyranny, and 
self-sacrifice on the altar of the rights of man. 

The Greek race knew two splendid creative periods. 
The first was a period of great length and wonderful 
achievement, wonderful for its manifoldness and 
abundance and its permanent worth to mankind. 
This period extended from Homer to Alexander the 
Great, 776 b. c. to 300 b. c. In this period the myth- 



158 A BOOK OF REMEMBRANCE 



ology, the poetry, sculpture, painting and political in- 
stitutions, the arts (the richest heritage of mankind 
from the past) were brought to their consummate de- 
velopment in Greece. The second period was not so 
wonderful for the variety and abundance of its prod- 
ucts, but its depths are such as have never been fully 
explored. It was in this period that Christianity was 
given to the world, Christian truth, Christian doc- 
trine, the Christian conception of God, and the uni- 
verse, the doctrine of the Logos and the divine incar- 
nation. In minds nurtured and quickened by Hel- 
lenic thought the Christian concepts took shape and 
came to birth. The writings of the Apostles and the 
Apostolic fathers appeared on soil fertilized by Hel- 
lenic ideas. This second period, roughly speaking, 
covered some three centuries on each side of the birth 
of Christ. 

There are inexperienced races just as there are in- 
experienced individuals. 

Voltaire in the eighteenth century labored for the 
emancipation of the intellect from ecclesiasticism and 
dogma. What Voltaire and Rousseau planned the 
French Revolution carried into effect. It was the 
execution of their wills. From Voltaire came the 
wrath of the Revolution, from Rousseau the enthu- 
siasm. The Revolution was in reality quite as much 
of a religious as of a political nature. From one 
standpoint, it was the result of the labors of the great 
free-thinking philosophers of the eighteenth century. 
We owe it freedom from prejudice, liberty of con- 
science and religious toleration. It is certainly not to 
the Church that we owe these. A whole host of lib- 



HISTOEY AND TEAVEL 159 



eral thinkers of different professions, men of charac- 
ter and talent, took part. The Church rallied all its 
forces for a desperate struggle and defeat. The 
Revolution progressed, first hesitatingly, then threat- 
eningly, then irresistibly, and finally in the intoxica- 
tion of victory. A handful of men, most of them 
exiled or in disgrace, succeeded under perfectly auto- 
cratic rule in winning over to their opinions the ablest 
men of the day. Thus the new truth, which was 
born in low estate, but was revered even in its cradle 
by mighty kings, by Frederick of Prussia, Joseph of 
Austria and Catherine of Russia, became the great 
power among the rising generation. Human reason 
had risen and freed itself with athletic strength. 
Where formerly they had believed in miracles, they 
now discovered a law. Never before was there such 
inquiry and such illumination. 

Protestantism is the result of the supremacy of the 
people. 

Guizot, in the " History of Civilization," presents 
three tests of a civilized people: — 1. They revere their 
pledges and honor. 2. They reverence and pursue 
the beautiful in painting, architecture, and literature. 
3. They exhibit sympathy in reform towards the poor, 
the weak and the unfortunate. 

Not only do authors pass away, but entire schools 
decline and disappear. There is an obsolete litera- 
ture. 

I doubt if the verdict of generations upon a oook 
ever errs substantially. 



160 A BOOK OF~EEMEMBEAKCE 



In Egypt there had been established an elaborate 
and splendid empire. It had strength, coherence, 
wealth, power, a vigorous government, dominant and 
exclusive castes of nobles and priests and a proletariat 
of slaves. Its cities, temples and monuments are still, 
in their ruins, the admiration of engineers and the 
despair of architects. Yes, there was the oppression 
of the millions, the habits of the higher classes were 
elaborately luxurious. Original intellectual concep- 
tions inspired its public buildings. How grand their 
tombs. The pictured scenes on their sides exhibit 
their indulgence. The inscriptions and paintings in 
the tombs near Thebes make it perfectly clear that the 
Egyptians looked forward to a future state, to the 
judgment bar of Osiris, where they would each one 
stand and give account of actions. That belief exer- 
cised a tremendous influence upon human conduct. 

Baltimore produced three poems: 

1. The Star-Spangled Banner. 

2. The Raven. 

3. Maryland, My Maryland. 

The French Romantic School may be called with- 
out exaggeration, the greatest literary school of the 
nineteenth century. Nodier, De Vigny, Hugo, De 
Musset, Georges Sand, Balzac, Beyle, Merimee, Gau- 
tier, Sainte-Beuve, Dumas. 

TRAVEL. 

The value of travel: At Rome I meet Michael An- 
gelo; at Stratford, Shakespeare; at Florence, in St. 
Mark's, Savonarola; at Amsterdam, Rembrandt; at 
Weimar, Goethe. 



HISTOEY AND TEAVEL 161 



There is no use in taking to China a lamp that will 
not burn in America. 

Switzerland is the one place in the world which is 
never false to old impressions when you come back to 
it. It pays a man to come often. 



The illogical streets of Boston have their lessons. 



VII 



ART 

BEAUTY. 

IT was one of these mental pictures which he 
could not make over, dim, much less obliterate. 
It was the stroke of a Master — one of God's 
strokes. 

God is beauty in the original. Remember Ros- 
setti's description of the King's daughter: 

" Alight with Cherubim ; 
Afire with Seraphim." 

Beauty is the mark God sets on virtue. 

Beauty is power. Beauty is educational. Beauty 
is inspirational. You cannot overstate the power of 
beauty in the realm of truth. A beautiful idea is like 
the shuttle in the loom which carries the thread of 
gold and crimson. It shoots to and fro, backwards 
and forwards through every part of a man's person- 
ality, until he is penetrated and interpenetrated with 
the beauty of the idea itself. 

God makes no half joints. But an eye without 
beauty would be a half joint. 

Fourteen people built Athens. It was a dream in 
marble, the despair of builders since Pericles. 

162 



ABT 



163 



A box of colors is not a picture, but it is essential 
to a picture. 

A friend asked me once: "Is it possible to make 
the sunbeam more beautiful?" I innocently an- 
swered: " No. The sunbeam is God's finished work." 
I thought that was conclusive. My friend took me to 
a triangular prism, and ran a sunbeam through it ; lo, 
in an instant, it sparkled out into all the beauties of 
the rainbow. It entered the crystal one miracle and 
it came out of the crystal seven other miracles. It is 
possible to increase the beauty of the sunbeams seven- 
fold. A fine Christian personality is one of God's 
prisms. Be such a prism and you will be a sevenfold 
power for good. In this way you can give the truth 
a sevenfold power among men. Love, courage, 
purity, optimism, sympathy, conscientiousness, and 
self-sacrifice, these are the beauties of the Gospel 
rainbow and they are the sevenfold colors of the 
Divine Light. 

The Gospel is in great pictures, the masterpieces of 
the immortal painters. Beauty is the handmaid of 
religion. There are the jewelled words of the Apoca- 
lypse ; the Book of Psalms is an art gallery, one Psalm 
is a thunder-storm, another is a quiet pastoral, an- 
other is a Righi view, and another is a picture of the 
Holy City all alive with the gathered tribes of God. 

A beautiful picture is a power, whether a man paint 
with words, or with pigments, or construct a mosaic 
out of brilliant stones. The world pictures of Jesus 
Christ are in evidence here. They are the mightiest 
forces, or among the mightiest forces at work in the 



164 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



human world to-day. Take the pictorial windows in 
Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn. 
Each window is a grand thought, it is a sublime doc- 
trine, it is a magnificent ideal. They marry beauty to 
truth. They are a divine plus. They are pictured 
facts, pictured scenes, pictured doctrines, pictured 
promises, pictured gospels fascinatingly set forth by 
the alphabet of art. 

The mission of art is to idealize beauty. Beauty 
finds its supreme sphere in the service of religion. 
It is right that art should be made a gospel student. 
It is right to appeal to the eye. It is right to make 
great truths flash in scarlet and purple and green and 
gold. There is no organ which God Himself so hon- 
ors, or so appeals to as the human eye. The flash of 
gems, the crimson of the morning, the glow of the 
sunset, the many-hued flowers, the dazzling plumage 
of birds, the corruscation of insect dyes, the rainbow 
on the background of the black storm, the pearly dew, 
are all tributes to the eye. 

Of Rossetti's pictures the distinguishing traits are, 
a wondrous mastery of color, dramatic power and 
passion, and a weird mysticism. He excelled in the 
study of physical beauty. He was unattached to any 
particular creed or church, yet he always felt the 
beautiful piety of his mother. 

Fra Angelico's creed was a creed as joyous as the 
Angel's song at Bethlehem, and as bright as a sunrise 
over the Mount of Transfiguration. In giving ex- 
pression to it, he invokes all the resources of color and 
all the suggestions of music. To him religion is not 
a bond of hard obedience ; it is a nigh privilege. 



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165 



The mission of art is to idealize beauty. Beauty 
finds its supreme sphere in the service of religion. 

Raphael got his whole religion into art. He talked 
by and through symbols. 

What is it in the soul that turns out to meet beauty, 
whether of line, or of tone, of color, or of form, of 
motion, or of harmony? 

Sandro Botticelli, the painter, made sensuality 
beautiful, ugliness seductive, and the sin-stained soul 
attractive. 

"The Nativity": Sir Edward Burne-Jones. He 
has achieved a splendid and enduring fame. His 
work bids fair to be the glory of England as that of 
Raphael is the permanent treasure of Italy. The 
Tate Gallery of London possesses many of his noblest 
creations. Some of his works of note: "Love 
Among the Ruins," "Fortune's Wheel," "King 
Cophetua and the Beggar Maid," and " The Resur- 
rection," and a window in St. Philip's Church, Bir- 
mingham. 

Murillo: "The Holy Family." The sanctity of 
human love. Christ is found related to the happiness 
and progress of the human race. His inspirations 
are the chief causes of blessing. He rises above the 
planes of humanity like the Matterhorn among the 
Alps. He has modified or molded all the institutions 
of men. He is no more at home in the Church than 
in the State, in the cathedral than in the family. The 
vital forces of civilization are born of Him. Art, 
literature, oratory, laws, society, the family, the state, 



166 A BOOK OP EEMEMBEANCE 

have all received from Him their infinite inspirations. 
At the consummation of history, they will all unite in 
placing on His head the many crowns. 

The preeminent pictures in all the European gal- 
leries are variations on the life of our Lord. Are we 
in Dresden? It is the Sistine Madonna. In Flor- 
ence? It is the Madonna della Sedia. In London? 
It is the Holy Family. In Rome? It is the Trans- 
figuration. In Milan? It is the Last Supper. In 
Antwerp? It is the Descent from the Cross. In 
Madrid? It is the Ascension. In Paris? It is the 
Immaculate Conception. 

Renouf in " The Pilot " indicates the message and 
ministry of the sea and the vastness of the ocean and 
the variety of its moods. Fully three-quarters of the 
surface of the earth is water. The ocean could swal- 
low the continents and leave not a vestige to be seen. 
The oceans are the inexhaustible fountains of mois- 
ture. Clouds and showers are pumped Up from the 
ocean by the sun. The rivers do not fill the ocean, 
the ocean fills the rivers. Our life depends on water. 
The ocean is the storehouse of the world's power. 
What excavated the canyons of the Yellowstone and 
Colorado ? 

George Frederick Watts, the artist of " The Super- 
natural Hope," is very masculine. He views life on 
a large scale. Witness his " Sir Galahad." He is the 
Browning among the artists, just as Burne-Jones is 
the Tennyson. He has Browning's spiritual vision, 
his optimism, his strong faith, his forward look. 
" Sir Galahad " is the spotless knight of Arthur's 



AET 



167 



Round Table and the only one of the knights to 
whom was given the vision of the Holy Grail. The 
picture is in Eton College, England. No better ser- 
mon could be preached to the boys. The picture sug- 
gests the glory of goodness. 

The artist Holman Hunt approaches his canvas 
with the same spirit which fills a prophet about to de- 
liver his message. With him his art is a medium for 
the expression of truth. 

Turner owes much of his fame to the praise of 
Ruskin. He painted "The Old Temeraire," Nel- 
son's famous warship, being towed to her resting- 
place after all the storms of battle. 

" The Transfiguration " hangs in the Gallery of 
the Vatican. It contains Raphael's last message. He 
died while the colors of the picture were still wet. 
Still incomplete, the painting hung over his couch 
while he was lying in state. 

Among the master artists the two greatest, Michael 
Angelo and Raphael, according to the standard of 
their age, were men of lovely character. 

The effete models of Greece and Rome have been 
largely supplanted by the sublime ideals of perfect 
manhood and a redeemed society. The grandest 
buildings are Christian temples, St. Peter's, St. 
Paul's, Milan, and Cologne, San Marco in Venice, the 
Duomo in Florence, the Madeleine in Paris, and St. 
Stephen's in Vienna. 

Corot and Turner, the greatest landscape painters, 



168 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



were both born in the city, Corot in Paris, Turner in 
London. Turner made over a million dollars by his 
work. Corot looked for beauty, and he found it. 

Leonardo was the metaphysician among the great 
painters of the Renaissance. 

SYMBOLISM. 

Art is language. It stands for ideals. Symbols 
get their intrinsic worth from their associations. 
Symbols have a meaning. They talk. What is a 
wedding ring? A few pennyweights of gold! Yet 
that little circle talks. A king's crown is but a rim 
of gold, yet it signifies law, authority, obedience, the 
State, sovereignty. The sacred robes mean the priest, 
the altar, the Church. 

The early Puritans turned away from Art because 
it embalmed corruption, it enshrined lies. " When 
the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock the trees were 
leafless except the pine. That stood green and hope- 
ful even in winter. That tree they marked. They 
chose it for their banner. It yet stands upon the seal 
of Massachusetts. No symbol in heaven or earth 
was half so fit. What other tree can so well stand 
for the principles of Liberty? It grows without cul- 
ture, and it flourishes on soil that would starve an- 
other tree. Sands and rocks are quite alike to it. 
Every root is an engineer. The wood rises straight 
up to God. It spreads out its branches to the North, 
the South, the East, the West alike and spires up in 
symmetry like a pinnacle of a cathedral. It defies 
the storm, is not afraid of heat or cold. It is grateful 
to culture, but thrives bravely even in neglect. It 



ART 



169 



adorns the habitation of men, but is just as much the 
glory of the wilderness. When all other trees have 
yielded to the frost, the evergreen pine lets go not a 
leaf, but holds up its plumed head like a warrior and 
whoops and shouts to the winds all winter long. Is 
not that the tree of Liberty? The Pilgrims chose it 
and placed it on their banner. All hail to the Pil- 
grims' pine, the tree of Liberty." 

Corot: the joy of light. 
Ruskin: the joy of beauty and sublimity. 
Emerson: the joy of the epigrammatic. 
Lowell: the joy of dialectics. 
Whittier: the joy of peace and quietness. 
John: the joy of love. 
Balzac: the joy of logic. 
Hugh McMillen: the joy of nature. 
Isaiah: the joy of vision. 
Zola: the joy of mal-odor. 
Browning: the joy of the profound. 
Tennyson: the joy of turning chaos into cosmos. 
Carlyle and Wendell Phillips: the joy of philippic. 
Chalmers: the joy of thunder and lightning. 
Demosthenes: the joy of eloquence. 
Newman: the joy of mysticism. 
De Maupassant, Gautier, Flaubert: the joy of the 
sensual. 

Phillips Brooks: the joy of rapture for humanity. 
Robert Collyer: the joy of the monosyllabic. 
J. G. Holland: the joy of commonsense. 
Plutarch: the joy of the biographical. 
Defoe: the joy of the romantic. 
Cervantes: the joy of puff and bombast. 
Hodge: the joy of theology. 



170 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



St. Francis of Assisi: the joy of sacrifice. 
Fra Angelico: the joy of the angelic. 
W. L. Watkinson: the joy of the pictorial. 
Edward Everett: the joy of faith. 
Josephus: the joy of exaggeration. 
Napoleon: the joy of ambition. 
Pascal: the joy of perfection. 

Ulysses and Orpheus sailed by " The Isle of the 
Sirens." Ulysses filled his ears with wax and bound 
himself to the mast with knotted thongs. Orpheus 
brought out his lyre; it made better music than did 
the sirens, and thus enchanted his crew, and they 
passed safely and victoriously and at peace. Religion 
is the obedience of delight, not the obedience of 
slavishness. 

Ishmael, the unconventional man, is described in 
scripture under the simile of " The Wild Ass." In 
colloquial English that would be a term of contempt, 
in literary Hebrew it is a term of admiration. The 
idea is that of impetuous brilliancy. It depicts a man 
of noble impulses unable to restrain them, rushing to 
realize his goal with magnetic but unreasoning speed. 

The ancients said of the Hebrew High Priest when 
he went into the Holy of Holies of the Temple, " He 
was robed with creation." The blue and the purple 
and the scarlet and the fine-twined linen, and the 
flashing stones, and the gold of mitre and breastplate 
were all speaking symbols. The material riches and 
things that were creation's best, its glories and its 
symbols, they were the expressions of the highest 
known spiritualities in the kingdom of truth. 



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171 



MUSIC. 

Songs and Love are divinely married. 

Great songs are seeds; they grow human lives. 
Listen to the singing of the sacramental hosts of 
God's elect as their holy songs reverberate through- 
out the ages. 

The song has its climax. 

Music is a matter of soul; and not of sound. 

All musical instruments are made one by the mu- 
sical score; but yet each instrument retains its own 
destined individuality. 

Music enriches, fertilizes, and consoles life, endows 
us with intuitive knowledge, the power of admiration, 
love for the noblest, tender pity for the weak and 
erring, and a sympathetic imagination. 

Music is love in search of a word. 

The classic birds are the thrush, the lark, and the 
nightingale. 

Under a musical presentation threadbare thoughts 
receive a renewed freshness, and words expand to a 
fullness from which they never recede. 

What shall not the orchestration of mankind finally 
produce ! 

The musical octave with its tones and half-tones 
and quarter-tones and its multifold keys is like the 
Niagara River. Do you know to the utmost the 



172 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



power of the Niagara River to create grandeur and 
beauty? We all admire the great cataract of that 
river. But one cataract does not exhaust its possi- 
bilities. Give the Niagara River rocks and declivities 
and channels through which to flow and over which 
to dash ; give it heights to leap from, and it will give 
you cascades and cataracts and white foam and tinted 
spray and flashing rainbows ad infinitum. Give the 
octave great themes to voice, and great personalities 
to handle its notes, and great souls to breathe them- 
selves through its notes, multiply the octave, give it 
organs and harps and orchestras, and give it conse- 
crated voices and choirs and congregations of holy 
men and women; give it Bachs, Beethovens, and 
Handels, give it the multitudinous thousands that 
crowd the Crystal Palace at the Handel Festivals, and 
it will give and regive and reduplicate and equal all 
the musical magnificence of the past, and keep the 
world vibrating forever with Hallelujah Choruses. 

There are things that come more naturally 
through song than through any other channel. Deep 
things find expression best in song. Great is the 
power of song. If the Hebrews had taken down their 
harps from the willow trees of Babylon, and sung the 
Lord's songs in that foreign land, it would have been 
the very best thing they could have done. They suf- 
fered by not doing so. Sing Christianity as well as 
preach it. Oh, for a faith that can sing all the songs 
of the Church. 

An ecstasy is something that cannot be put into 
words. Music comes the nearest to expressing it. It 
is something to be felt and surrendered to. 



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173 



What Shakespeare was to literature ; Rembrandt to 
portrait painting; Michael Angelo to sculpture; John 
Sebastian Bach was to organ music. The organ 
reached perfection at the hands of Bach. 

It is said that one of the loveliest melodies in one 
of Beethoven's compositions, the Pastoral Sym- 
phony, I think, was built up out of a rude rustic 
rhythm that was wafted one night to the great com- 
poser's ears as he lay in bed in a country inn. A pass- 
ing wayfarer of the night was humming to himself a 
few notes of a folk song as he went on his home- 
ward path. The rhythm struck the composer. He 
put something down in his note-book. He bent his 
mind over it, with laborious patience which was char- 
acteristic of his genius. He turned it one way and 
another. He shot it through and through with new 
harmonies and strange discords. He varied it in a 
hundred different ways until the old country tune be- 
came glorified into something altogether wonderful. 
It was the old tune, yet infinitely and gloriously new. 
The dull chrysalis had become a beautiful butterfly. 
It was all changed, and yet one knew it to be the same 
creation in spite of the change. All had been made 
new by the intermingling with it of the melodies of 
the master. 

THE THEATRE. 

If you are going to please everybody, you must put 
on the boards a universal pleasure to make the ap- 
peal to the audience. This flings you back inevitably 
to the instinct of sex as an avenue to all hearts, other- 
wise you will be greeted with yawns. 



174 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKAtfCE 



Ibsen invented the drama of catastrophe. He is 
not dazzled by or enamored of wealth. His method 
is Socratic, " Let us talk it over." Ibsen is the enemy 
of all convention; he takes nothing for granted. No 
axiom is so universally received as to be safe from 
his profane analysis. 

Edwin Booth personated twenty-five chief charac- 
ters in dramatic literature. He excelled especially in 
Hamlet and King Lear. It was a great capacity to 
assume and sustain such diversified and contrasted 
personalities. He embodied the creations of the 
genius in literature. He suffused them all with his 
personal charm. Taking Richelieu, Hamlet, Lear, 
Iago, and Bertuccio together, and the observer has a 
complete exemplification of Booth and of his style 
and method. He had powerful eyes, a mobile face, a 
flexible, sonorous voice, and the intense concentra- 
tion of eloquent repose. 

"The Fool's Revenge" by Tom Taylor, which 
Booth played, is a rebuke of the wickedness of human 
quest for revenge. The lesson of it is the ancient 
Bible lesson that vengeance is an attribute of God. 

The play of " Brutus " by John Howard Payne is 
valuable for the strong way it inculcates the awful 
holiness of chastity, the dignity of honor, and the 
value of freedom. 

* The theatre is a curious human institution, a place 
to introduce imaginary people and imaginary life. 
Its object to delight the public, cheer, and instruct. 
The lack of a proper theatre is a great privation. It 



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175 



gathers and garners the intellectual harvests of the 
age. It is the drama that makes the theatres and not 
the theatre that makes the drama. Stage figures are 
meant to show forth and expose real life figures. 

Brieux says : " I wish through the theatre not only 
to make people think, to modify habits and facts, but 
still more to bring about laws which are desirable." 
Brieux was a great reader. He spent his time with 
the masterpieces, preferably the classics. 

No one can read a play of August Strindberg 
(Swedish) without receiving an intellectual jolt. 
He is a great human. 

In the translation French plays may lose much of 
their wit and thought; but they lose nothing of their 
vulgarity. 

Aristophanes, the caricaturist, used public ridicule 
as a means of grace. Of his forty plays, we have only 
eleven now. In one of these a duel in the choicest 
Billingsgate of Athens takes place. 

Dr. Johnson's famous sentence on the death of 
Garrick. It embalms the memory of David Garrick 
in a sentence which can die only with the English 
language. " I am disappointed by that stroke of 
death which has eclipsed the gaiety of nations and 
impoverished the public stock of harmless pleasure." 

Brieux faces life with a drama, and by his drama 
he unflinchingly and conscientiously solves great 
problems and enforces great duties. He creates 
within you a disquieting sense that you are involved 



176 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



in the evils that he unmasks and that you owe a duty 
to civilization. He is a reformer. He indicts na- 
tions, epochs, yes, even human nature itself. His 
blows fall on human noses for the good of human 
souls. 

" Pelleas and Melisande " by Maurice Maeterlink. 
With Maeterlink the presence of death is always lurk- 
ing near. To Maeterlink and Goethe and Carlyle si- 
lence is golden. He is a symbolist. He is the Belgian 
Shakespeare. 

In his play " Leonarda " (1879) Bjornson treats 
the subject of the emancipation of the conscience 
from the conventional bonds of traditional religion. 
Ibsen deals with the same theme in " Rosmersholm." 

Sir J. M. Barrie's " What Every Woman Knows." 
A genuine Scotch play. It shows what a fine wife is 
to a man, and how deftly and skillfully she handles 
him. He thinks he is handling himself. This wife 
puts into his parliamentary addresses the neat little 
touches which give a speech vitality, interest, fresh- 
ness, and individuality. Mr. John Shand falls in love 
with another woman and gives her credit for being 
his inspiration. The wife knows she is not and so 
arranges it that they are together while he attempts 
to write the great speech of his life. He fails and 
the other woman appears in her true weakness. He 
says to his wife: " I seem to have lost my neat way 
of saying things." She has to do for him what she 
has always done and the speech comes out all right. 
There is one instance she touches up: "Gentlemen, 
the Opposition are calling you to vote for them and 
the flowing tide, but I solemnly warn you to beware 



AET 



177 



that the flowing tide does not engulf you." She 
makes it read, " Gentlemen, the Opposition are call- 
ing you to vote for them and the flowing tide, but I 
ask you cheerfully to vote for us and dam the flowing 
tide." 



VIII 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 

PHILOSOPHY. 

RELIGION in its root idea is admiration. Re- 
ligion robbed of emotion is not the Christian 
religion. 

God is a working hypothesis. The universe is a 
thought, an ordered whole, a moral system; there 
must be a thinker, a designer, a lawgiver, an upholder, 
a ruler. 

I feel like Socrates at the Fair of Athens, a secret 
joy to think of the number of things I do not want. 

Problems as old as life itself, — problems of love, 
friendship, passion, ambition, office, the getting and 
the use of money. 

There are a great many things that make us ques- 
tion the moral government of the universe. 

Does God make the jests we see about us — the 
heartless jests? 

vEschylus and Ezekiel lived in the same century. 
The Greek stood for " Sweet Reasonableness." The 
Hebrew stood for " Sweet Righteousness." 

178 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEBATUKE 179 



What is a radical ? One who goes to the roots of a 
subject, who follows premise to conclusion. The ex- 
tremist is a radical. 

Karl Marx said of Stuart Mill that his eminence 
was due to the flatness of the surrounding country. I 
hate to think that Shakespeare has lasted three hun- 
dred years, or that Plato, more than two thousand 
years old, is still ahead of our voters. 

With reference to God's responsibility for the 
horrors of life Henri Beyle writes: "What excuses 
God is that He does not exist." He was a passionate 
atheist, acknowledging no mainspring of action but 
self-interest. 

We can tell what life does; but we cannot tell what 
life is. We can tell the essential conditions of life. 

LITERARY ART. 

The uncommon beauty and marvellous English of 
King James' version of the Bible, — that is its power. 

To make one fine phrase is to create a circle of 
beauty. A fine phrase makes the difference between 
platitude and the play of genius. The fascination of 
style is not to be belittled. 

Some men in their writing shout themselves hoarse 
by the use of italics and small caps. 

The New Testament in the world of literature is a 
miracle of language; just as in the world of religion 
it is a miracle of divine revelation. 



180 A BOOK OF KEMEMBEANCE 



Literature is a means whereby a man may vitalize 
his thinking. By it one may get the power of self- 
expression. The book is a purifying power. Purify 
your pen. Truth passing through a pen is like the 
sunbeam passing through a prism; it comes forth 
transfigured. 

The master of the short-story, who outclasses all 
writers, is Guy de Maupassant who received this law 
from his teacher Flaubert: "Whatever be the thing 
one wishes to say, there is only one phrase to express 
it; only one verb to animate it; and only one adjective 
to qualify it. One must seek and seek until one finds 
this phrase, this verb, this adjective; and one must 
never be content with less, never be satisfied with 
substitutes ! " It was by slow pain that Charles Lamb 
brought out his undying phrase, " He is a Scotch- 
Greek; half thistle and half flower; half nettle and 
half flower." 

Literature, a help to the religious life, is bread for 
the hungry. 

The most perfect passage of sarcasm in literature 
is Isaiah 44. The most perfect passage of denuncia- 
tion in literature is Matthew 23. In both of these in- 
stances the tongue is a fiery lash. 

Literature is an aid to the sermon. It contributes 
variety, beauty, life, and power. 

The masters of literature are the leaders of man- 
kind. Literature is a bond of union between preacher 
and his people, a positive personal exhilaration, dis- 
cipline, diversion, a pointer and index of the spirit of 
the age and at the same time fine companionship. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 181 



The value of literature in the construction of a ser- 
mon for creating an interest in the truth: 

1. For beautifying the expression of the truth. 

2. For giving vitality of form and method in ex- 
pressing the truth. 

3. For quoting the great and world-known au- 
thorities in the establishment of the truth. 

4. For illustration and illumination of the truth. 

5. For vitalizing the truth. 

6. For setting forth the truth by means of con- 
trasts and parallels. 

7. For quickening the religious spirit. 

" Truth in closest words shall fail, 
When truth embodied in a tale, 
Shall enter in at lowly doors." 

— Tennyson. 

Literature to the Minister: 

(1) It is a house of refreshing and of refuge. 

(2) It trains the mind for the appreciation of the 
best. 

(3) It quickens the senses for the best expressions. 

(4) It is a great enrichment. 

There is one glory of Addison, and another glory 
of Carlyle, and another glory of Whitman, and am 
other glory of Tennyson. 

Versed in Wordsworth, Milton, Shakespeare, 
Browning, Tennyson, Whittier, Longfellow, Arnold, 
a man will be finely equipped for preaching to his 
fellowmen. 

There is no democracy like that of literature. It 
flings wide open all doors. It admits to the presence 



182 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



of the kings of thought. You meet Socrates and 
Plato. In it we have made over to us the best of 
human nature. 

The pen of Thomas Paine made the sword of 
George Washington possible. 

Literature is one of the high arts using words for 
colors. 

The mission of literature: 

(a) The conception, embodiment and interpreta- 
tion of some great idea or principle. 

(b) The correct interpretation of the spirit of the 
age. 

(c) The interpretation of human nature to itself 
and to the world. 

(d) The presentation and enforcement of high 
ideals. 

Literary style waits on worshipful toil. 

The simple fact that our language contains one 
hundred thousand words intimates that there are 
many colors of thought, many shades of opinion and 
many tints of emotion. It is a wonderful pleasure to 
read along with a great author, like Lamartine and 
Shakespeare, and mark the coming and going of 
words, their differences and their harmonies. The 
tints of the autumn forests, the many shades which 
pass over the clouds at sunset are equalled in number 
and delicacy by the shades of significance which are 
spread before us by the great authors through the 
richness of speech. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATUKE 183 



The anatomy of satire. It is the humor that 
stings. It is laughter that slays. In Ibsen it is vit- 
riol, in Swift fury, in Voltaire a bomb. Juvenal, a 
contemporary of Christ, was a satirist, so was Cer- 
vaites, Don Quixote, and Moliere, and Swift. 

A great French writer says that " style is the man." 
Gibbon, Carlyle, Macaulay, Renan, Newman, Arnold, 
all have their own peculiar style. You would know 
their writing anywhere. 

You cannot communicate imagination to a man. 
The communicable power is that of technique. It is 
this that painters, writers, speakers, architects, musi- 
cians, sculptors can learn. 

The way to learn to write is to write. 

Write, prune, recast, polish, elaborate, simplify, 
weigh each phrase, destroy the rubbish, burn. 

Accustom yourself to phrasing thoughts in your 
mind without writing them down. 

Take great pains in trying to express the common- 
place. 

Observe the cyclone-swept pages of Carlyle, the 
mysteriousness of Kipling, the realism of Hardy. 

An epigram is a thought packed for quick trans- 
portation. It looks spontaneous. It gives crispness 
and vigor to style. The Greeks used the word epi- 
gram originally to signify a verse inscribed on a 
tomb. The more it has of the air of instantaneous, 
happy inspiration, the more effective it is. 



184 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



Max Nordau whimsically remarks, in " Degener- 
acy " : " In the highly significant Biblical legend even 
Balaam's ass acquired speech when he had something 
definite to say." 

Observe the superb series of interrogations in job ! 
" Canst thou bind the sweet influence of the Pleiades, 
or loose the bands of Orion? Canst thou bring fortn 
Mazzaroth in his season? Or canst thou guide 
Arcturus with his sons? Knowest thou the ordi- 
nances of Heaven? " 

The reward of the student of literature is great, 
but his labor also is great. 

James Russell Lowell says: "The art ot writing 
consists largely in knowing what to leave in the ink 
pot." 

Sainte-Beuve excels in the critical interpretation of 
the personality of notable women. 

Moore plays with his theme and caresses it. 
Byron tears his theme to pieces and turns from it in 
disgust. 

STUDY. 

To get back to first things relative to the sacra- 
ments of the New Testament, which have been well- 
nigh buried in the rubbish of the centuries, it is neces- 
sary to set before our thought the estimation in which 
they have been held, to see them in their pristine esti- 
mation and original simplicity. To do this we have 
to familiarize ourselves with history. This opens a 
whole world for study, and puts us as students in 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUEE 185 



touch with all the ages and all the branches of the 
Christian Church. 

We must gather for ourselves material which we 
can use in making the sacraments of the New Testa- 
ment interesting and attractive, and powerful in our 
lives. 

Emotion on ice — that is the popular style of 
scholars. 

The archeological spade belongs as much to the pul- 
pit and the Bible classrooms as it does to the univer- 
sity. It is its mission to build up the fortifications of 
the Bible. 

To be taught — educated — a man needs to meet a 
sufficient number of men who believe differently 
from him. 

I regard the study of Greek as an invaluable train- 
ing in accuracy, subtlety of thought, and sense of 
form. 

The sciences, geology, astronomy, history, teach us 
to think in seons and in races, instead of in years and 
as individuals. 

READING. 

Reading broadens our sympathies and enlarges our 
chanties; our whole being is elevated and our hori- 
zon widened by fellowship with great men. 



The primary aim of literary reading is informa- 
tion or enlightenment. Literary equipment; the 



186 A BOOK OF BEMEMBKANCE 

library is an educational agency. It is the treasury 
of information for the enquiring mind. A second 
aim is culture, the education of the taste. The beau- 
tiful is studied for its own sake. A third aim is dis- 
cipline. 

" Some books are to be chewed and digested." 
Their reading is to be studious. 

Literature is an introduction to society, a personal 
exhilaration, a diversion, a discipline, an index of the 
spirit of the age. The masters in literature are fine 
company. 

" What is your favorite book ? " asked Ralph W. 
Emerson of George Eliot. The answer was " Ros- 
seau's Confessions." " So it is mine," said Emerson. 
Mr. Browning nibbled at the same cheese. The be- 
lief now is that Rousseau's " Confessions " are con- 
structive truth as differentiated from fact. His book 
is a philosophical study of hopes, desires, aspirations, 
and hesitations flavored with regret. He wrote a 
work which has influenced the world after his death. 
He was a Swiss and a native of Geneva. Napoleon 
said: " Had there been no Rousseau there would have 
been no revolution." Morot, Mirabeau, and Robes- 
pierre got their arguments direct from Rousseau. 
His " Social Contract " inspired Paine to write his 
pamphlet " Common Sense," an influence that helped 
to bring about the American Revolution. Jefferson 
read and reread and marked " The Social Contract." 
Rousseau was a man of feeling. 

A taste tonic: Goethe says taste is to be educated 
only by the contemplation of the truly excellent 



PHILOSOPHY^AiTO'LITEKATiraE 187 



Matthew Arnold recommends us to carry in our 
heads excerpts of the best of Homer, Virgil, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Milton, Keats, and to repeat and repeat 
these gems of literature to ourselves as a taste tonic. 

Enjoyment is a prime essential in measuring a 
book. 

The object of reading literature is not only to un- 
derstand it, but to experience it, to comprehend with 
both the intellect and the emotions. 

In order to accompany an author who soars, it is 
necessary to have wings of one's own. 

Take literature out of your life and see how im- 
poverished it is ! How many of your ideals go ! Out 
go Thackeray, Dickens, Emerson, Tennyson, Brown- 
ing, Longfellow, Whittier, Stevenson, Kipling, Tur- 
genief, Guy de Maupassant. They have educated 
our sympathies. It is our good fortune to live in a 
time which in the whole course of English literature 
is outranked only by the brilliant Elizabethan period. 

" I went to a library shelf," said Pascal, " to take 
down a book and instead of a book I found a man." 
There are some such books, books every sentence of 
which challenges our judgment, rouses the mind, 
and deeply stirs the feelings. The author conveys 
himself. 

WRITERS AND NON-WRITERS. 

Jesus wrote nothing. Like Socrates He remained 
an authority — not an author. 



188 A BOOK OF REMEMBKANCE 

The literary student lives in an atmosphere satu- 
rated with the memories, traditions, and history of 
great men and great deeds. 

Authors above all men should be intensely human. 
The first question with regard to the author's style is, 
"Is it vital?" "Has it life?" 

Mr. Zola and his ilk pretend to describe human life 
just as it is. But, Mr. Zola, why do you not take 
note of its heights as well as its depths? You ought 
to be ideal as well as real. The ideal is part of us. 
Deal with nature's sublime possibilities. 

" Can you emit sparks ? " asked the cat of the ugly 
duckling. Emerson could emit sparks. He was all 
sparks and shocks. He is the most non-consequen- 
tious of writers. This is his characteristic. 

THE PROSE WRITERS. 

Ruskin is always outspoken. He reveals the beau- 
ties and glories of art to the Philistines. 

Matthew Arnold enjoyed an enormous vogue and 
at times seemed to approach the chair of literary dic- 
tator vacated by the death of Dr. Johnson. He is an 
example of the furthest limit attainable by culture, 
refinement, and genius. 

Lord Morley says : " Carlyle unceasingly preached 
the gospel of silence ; and in his own case managed to 
condense it into thirty-five formidable volumes." 

Andrew Lang never lets himself down by thor- 
oughly admiring anybody. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 189 



The infamy of Bacon is all but forgotten in the 
glory of his literary testament. 

Flaubert's writings are orchestral. 

Montaigne's name for mankind is that of the great 
doubter. His work is a book of mature life, a life 
century-ripened. The sublimities, the enthusiasms, 
the heroics of life are here. There is no death-chal- 
lenge. 

Walter Pater's Essay on Leonardo is his master- 
piece. 

Thackeray just saturated himself with Richardson, 
Fielding, Smollett, Addison, and Steele. 

One of the greatest things Herbert Spencer ever 
wrote was his essay on " The Law of Pivotal Points." 
These are the events that change the history of the 
world. They carry opportunity. 

Emerson writes on these topics which are at the 
base of life ; such as love, experience, character, man- 
ners, fate, power, worship, nature, and art. Carlyle 
outside of " Sartor Resartus " and " Hero Worship " 
usually reviews books, histories, individuals at ex- 
treme length and with dramatic comment and anal- 
ysis. Emerson treats of the principles behind all his- 
tory. Terseness is the distinctive feature of his style. 

Goethe, Carlyle, Victor Hugo, the three conspicu- 
ous writers of their century. 

By Goethe men were magnetized into idolatry of 
him. Take Carlyle's worship of Goethe. His was 



190 A BOOK OF EEMEMEEANCE 



self-worship also. " Faust " was his greatest work. 
The morals of the age were lax. His mother was 
only eighteen when he was born, his father forty. 

Hazlitt, the prince of critics; one of his most fin- 
ished works is " The Spirit of the Age " or " Con- 
temporary Portraits," 

Everything in Dickens is in excess, caricature, com- 
ical exaggeration. 

In " Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde," by Stevenson, you 
have St. Paul's text: " The flesh lusteth against the 
spirit, etc.," buried deep into memory. 

Laurence Sterne, a vicar, born 1713. "Tristam 
Shandy." A gifted nonsensical. See his " Senti- 
mental Journey." 

Macaulay. Descended from Scotch Presbyterians, 
and Quakers on his mother's side. Born 1800, died 
1859. He was an impressive speaker. He filled the 
House of Parliament every time it was known that 
he was to speak. He lives in his essays and history. 
His writing charmed by its color, variety and interest. 
His history is a brilliant narration of events. 

Walter Savage Landor. A striking figure in the 
history of English literature, striking alike by his 
powers and his character. Personally he exercised 
the spell of genius. Not to know this man, with his 
force, charm, impetuosity, lofty attainments, is to be 
a loser. He wrote on many subjects. His literary 
activity extended over a period of sixty-eight years, 
1795-1863. He was majestically sedate. He was 
born in Warwick, January, 1775. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEBATTJEE 191 



Bernard Shaw has passion, and he has style. He 
says things in an arresting voice. He uses the doc- 
trines of socialism as Cromwell's troopers used the 
Psalms of David, or as Tolstoy used the Gospels of 
Christ — viz., to put the unjust man and his evil ways 
out of court and countenance. He was born to chas- 
tise the sins of his day. 

Beyle was by nature a robust sensualist and had 
accustomed himself to a cynical boldness of expres- 
sion. He prided himself that he was free from illu- 
sions. Beyle's novels have been called: "Hand- 
books of Hypocrisy." " Love's Work." Beyle says 
the lover adorns his loved one, he makes her out per- 
fection. He idealizes her. He calls it the process of 
crystallization. " One takes pleasure in adorning 
with a thousand perfections the woman of whose love 
one is sure, one rehearses all the details of one's hap- 
piness with infinite satisfaction. Allow the brain of 
a lover to work for twenty-four hours and the result 
will resemble what happens at Salzburg when a leaf- 
less branch is let down into the deserted depths of the 
salt mines. When it is drawn up again two or three 
months later it is covered with myriads of dazzling 
twinkling diamonds. The smallest twig is decked 
with sparkling crystals. The original branch is un- 
recognizable. What I denominate crystallization is 
the operation of the mind which, from everything 
that presents itself, draws the discovery of fresh per- 
fections in the beloved object." 

Prosper Merimee paints the individual in anec- 
dotes, he argues and illustrates by anecdotes, he elu- 
cidates by anecdotes. 



192 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



Cervantes, one of the robust spirits in Spanish lit- 
erature. No vital subject is alien to him. His style 
is supple, delicate, adapted to reflect the facets as well 
as the general form of his subject. He renews him- 
self. His phrase becomes transparent, richer, sim- 
pler, and more suggestive. It has the clarity of 
Velasquez. 

Oscar Wilde was a degenerate, yet he could write 
English of silken delicacy. He wrote coarse stuff 
also. He sowed great fields of literary wild oats. 

POETS. 

Browning would have you trust those moments 
when the grand hope seems true to you, so would 
God. Hence He sends us these grand moments. 

Browning is a help to the man that is down, who 
has failed, who is disappointed. He breaks in upon 
him with a strong and helpful word and mood. He 
shows him the things that compensate. He helps 
him in his emotional life. He sings a song to heal 
the wound. He helps all who feel the difficulty of 
believing. He is the great apologist. Browning is a 
healthy man. He has faith. He discovers God 
through all, in all, and over all. 

There are pivotal moments. Browning was right 

in his doctrine of the great " Eternal moments 99 

when the whole of life seems packed into a single 
hour of revelation and destiny. 

Browning's three poems, " Caliban on Setebos," 
"Rabbi Ben Ezra" and "A Death in the Desert" 
should be read in this order, for there is a logical 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 193 



order of thought. The first is as an amphibious brute 
would imagine Him, the second is noble Hebrew 
Theism, the third is the Christian God of Love. The 
first is the most original, the second the finest. 

Keats died at twenty-five, born the same year as 
Carlyle. He had the gift of poetic expression, mas- 
tery of diction. " Ode on a Grecian Urn," " Ode to 
a Nightingale, ,, "The Eve of St. Agnes," " Hy- 
perion." 

Byron, a great genius who stands on insincerity. 
He lacked morals. In his finest frenzies he poses. 

"The Vision of Sir Launfal" (Lowell). Sir 
Launf al met a leper, he shared with him his crust, 
and gave him to drink from his wooden bowl. 

" As Sir Launfal mused with downcast face, 
A light shone round about the place ; 
The leper no longer crouched at his side, 
But stood before him glorified, 
Shining and tall and fair and straight. 
' Lo, it is I, be not afraid ! 
This is My body broken for thee, 
This water His blood that died on the tree. 
The Holy Supper is kept indeed, 
In what we share with another's need : 
Not what we give, but what we share, 
For the gift without the giver is bare, 
Who gives himself with his alms feeds three, 
Himself, his hungry neighbor, and Me.' 99 

Lesson: carry the spirit of the fellowship of the 
sacramental room out into life. Fill life with holy 



194 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



Christian fellowships and thus in different ways see 
that " The Holy Supper is kept." 

Wordsworth, a prophet as well as a poet, our great 
interpreter of nature; only rival, Goethe, his great 
contemporary. He believed that in some mysterious 
way nature is alive, and able to teach mankind all the 
lessons that mankind needs to know. 

Browning wrote steadily for thirty years to a pub- 
lic stolidly antagonistic. His creed " I believe in God 
and truth, and love." He was an unflinching opti- 
mist. Virtue lies in the struggle. He is not a seda- 
tive ; he is a tonic. A great thought leader. He calls 
to manhood. 

Shelley died at thirty, but he had reached his full 
development. He was, to use Browning's epithet, a 
" Sun-Treader." 

Tennyson, the most representative poet of the 
nineteenth century. He lived in every decade of the 
nineteenth century. Not an original man. He 
translated into verse the thoughts of others. He 
stated problems rather than solved them. He was the 
spokesman of his age. Practically all the philosoph- 
ical, scientific, and political thoughts of the nineteenth 
century may be found in his works. The friendship 
between Tennyson and Browning is one of the beau- 
tiful things in the annals of literature. 

" The Ring and the Book " is the measure of 
Browning. 

Swinburne was " the Poet of Youth." 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUKE 195 



The Parliament of Religion at Chicago's World 
Fair brought out one great fact, viz., that God never 
left Himself without a witness, and that there can 
never be but one true religion. All the religions of 
the whole world are so many attempts to realize it, 
and formulate it. Tennyson puts it thus: 

" They are but broken lights of Thee, 
And Thou, O Lord, art more than they." 

Browning's plays, although representative of char- 
acters and conditions, are not dramatic, his persons 
make long speeches in labored verse. They all talk 
alike, all alike. 

England added an Eleventh Commandment to the 
Ten: "Don't read Byron's books." 

Poe is full of unreality. But even his mystery to 
his mind is mathematical. He loves to dissect cancers 
of the mind. His style is highly finished, graceful 
and truly classical. His form has great merit. 

As a poetic writer Poe gives in " The Bells " the 
most perfect example of his power of words. Per- 
haps there is nothing beyond this for power of words 
in all poetic literature. Mrs. Shaw of New York as- 
sisted Poe in writing " The Bells." He had to write 
a poem, he said, but was in no humor. She served 
him tea in the conservatory, the windows of which 
were open admitting the sound of the neighboring 
church bells. She produced pens and paper, but he 
declined them, saying that he disliked the sound of 
bells so much that night that he could not write. She 
took the pen and paper and wrote the headline " The 



196 A BOOK OP BEMEMBRANCE 



Bells," by E. A. Poe: and for the first line of the 
projected poem wrote, "The bells, the little silver 
bells.' ' He finished the stanza. She suggested for 
the first line of the second stanza, "The heavy iron 
bells," and he finished that stanza also. Then he 
copied the composite poem and headed it, " By Mrs. 
M. L. Shaw" and handed it to her, saying it was 
hers. 

Literature includes four epic poems of the first 
rank of genius. The Iliad, the ^Eneid, the Divine 
Comedy, and Paradise Lost. Strangely enough, 
these primary springs of education for four nations 
have one and the same theme, the divineness of man's 
soul, its loss and recovery. 

All Browning's poems are nothing but dramas of 
the inner life. 

Omar Khayyam: " Rubaiyat." The poem is the 
best expression of a bad mood. A sort of Bible of 
unbelief. Still pessimism is a thing unfit for a white 
man, it ought never to be a food. 

Tennyson sings the deep, wide love of Cod, the 
deathless destiny of men, the radiant beauty and per- 
fection of Christ, the soul's Saviour. " Crossing the 
Bar" was his last will and testament to the world. 
The works of Tennyson include more than three hun- 
dred quotations from the Bible. 

Poetic Types: 

1 — The Ethical, or subjective school. 

2 — The Classical, esthetic school. 

3 — The Romantic, or objective school. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 197 



The essentials of poetry: 

1 — Thought ; the poet must be a man of ideas. 

2 — Imagination. 

3 — Feeling. 

4— Taste. 

The rewards of poetry: 

1 — It is a revealer and interpreter of life and na- 
ture. 

2 — It elevates and refines. 

3 — It gives pleasure. 

Henry W. Longfellow was the first American to 
receive the honor of a bust in the Poets' Corner in 
Westminster Abbey. His poetical works are noted 
for their perfection in construction, beauty of 
thought, and simplicity of expression. 

The monologue, as Browning has exemplified it, is 
one end of a conversation. Browning is the poet of 
the monologue. 

Browning is a wise and true doctor of the soul. 
To him life was full of great things, love, beauty, joy. 
His poems are all aglow with the color of life, its 
many-hued interests. Hence while we read him we 
find it easy to share his strenuous hope and his firm 
faith, particularly his faith in immortality. One of 
his characteristic phrases is, " Tell the whole mind 
out." 

Paul as a poet. The Hymn to Love, 1 Corinthians 
13, is a classic in literature. The eighth chapter of 
Romans is poetical. The opening of the Epistle to 
the Ephesians with its refrain " To the praise of His 



198 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



glory " is nothing but a great and solemn poem which 
celebrates the grace of God. He says; "la Hebrew 
of the Hebrews," and then he straightens himself up 
and grandly claims his privileges, " Whose are the 
fathers, and the adoption, and the Shekinah, and the 
covenants, and the legislation, and the liturgy, and 
the promises, and to whom belong the Patriarchs, and 
from whom arises the Messiah" (Romans 9:4-5). 

The time which Horace recommended that a poem 
remain unpublished is nine years. Publish it if it 
holds its own at the end of nine years. 

" The Bigelow Papers " are a master work. They 
set forth Yankee character in its thought, dialect, 
manners, shrewdness, and fundamental sense of 
beauty and height ; they were a great hit. 

Tennyson with all his tune and color " Climbs no 
mount of vision." 

Heine, a German Jew. One thing he proves, viz., 
that genius without principle acts only as a chaotic 
force; also that mere Hellenism will not save the 
world. 

On Heine, of all German authors, the largest por- 
tion of Goethe's mantle fell. Heinrich Heine was 
born in Homberg. By race a Jew, with warm 
sympathies for France. A Philistine, a dogged, un- 
enlightened opponent of the chosen people and of the 
children of light. Heine writes : " I might settle in 
England, were it not I should find Englishmen there; 
I cannot abide them." 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 199 



Sappho, the Greek poetess. She lived somewhere 
between 628 and 572 b. c., three centuries before 
Homer, two centuries before Pericles. Among the 
Greeks " The Poet " meant Homer, " The Poetess " 
meant Sappho. Plato called her " The Tenth Muse." 
Tradition has it that the recitation of one of her 
poems so affected Solon, the great lawgiver, that he 
expressed the wish that he might not die till he had 
learned it by heart. She was as pure as gold. She 
was not an Aspasia. The loss of her poems is a 
great loss to the world. 

There is nothing in the poems or letters of Burns 
that goes beyond sincere Deism — the religion de- 
scribed in " The Cottar's Saturday Night " is his 
father's faith not his own (Principal Shairp). He 
made the poorest ploughman proud of his station and 
his toil. He was the impersonation of a Scotsman 
on a large scale. He was the interpreter of the 
Scotch peasantry. He restored Scotch 1 nationality. 
The world owes the love of Scotland to-day to Burns. 
Burns' sympathies were not confined to class nor 
country, they reached to universal man. 

" Facts are chiels that winna ding 
And daurna be disputed." 

He has spoken home to the universal heart. It is as 
a song- writer that Burns has his greatest fame, and 
he was a man of an intense nature. These songs em- 
body human emotion ; for these songs the world owes 
him gratitude. 

Byron died when he was thirty-six, Keats when he 
was twenty-five and Shelley when he was thirty. It 



200 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



is worse than useless to deplore the irremediable. 
What the world would have lost if Bach, Titian, 
Michael Angelo, and Goethe had died young ! Shelley 
was educated at Eton and Oxford, and he had no 
faculty for compromise. His works include, " Pro- 
metheus Unbound," " The Cenci," and " The Hymn 
to Intellectual Beauty." He says, " I am content to 
see no further into the future than Plato and Bacon. 
My mind is tranquil. We know nothing. We have 
no evidence." 

Dryden: born 1631. Very little material for a bi- 
ography. "Absalom and Architophel," " Song for 
St. Cecilia's Day." He wrote eagerly for the stage. 

Thomas Gray: born 1716. "Elegy in a Country 
Churchyard." 

Edmund Spenser. A beginning in English litera- 
ture. Born 1552. "Faerie Oueene," "The Shep- 
herd's Calendar." 

Southey. He lived completely in literature. I do 
not know that it would be much of a loss to lose his 
works. 

There are fugitive songs hidden in odd corners of 
newspapers; they are bits of flying Stardust, which 
glow for a moment in swift passage through the fir- 
mament and vanish, having no home in the eternities. 
Some have charm and feeling and a hint of true 
beauty, and some have a magical lilt. They have a 
single bright instinct, a loveliness ; the world would be 
poorer without them. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUKE 201 



Walt Whitman is a master egotist, but he made 
good. He did not blame himself! He censured the 
world. He would never willingly yield an inch to it. 
His life was a fight from start to finish. He was a 
rebel in his art and in his message. He was a radical. 
He belonged to revolt. He started not with wealth; 
he started with man. He preached accordingly. He 
ran counter to the prejudices of traditions. To the 
last he was a young old man still jubilant. He was a 
new force let loose on old earth. People got used to 
him, they tolerated him, they respected him, they 
loved him. In Russia a whole native edition of 
Whitman was destroyed. In Toronto, Canada, the 
authorities raided the bookstores for objectionable 
classics and destroyed the books by Whitman. Whit- 
man is quoted everywhere. Whitman is vindicated. 
He was in the beginning called " the lecherous old 
man." He was a social outlaw. He had celebrated 
English friends who sustained him, gave him vitality 
and courage. Tennyson said: ' 'Acknowledge and re- 
spect him." The critics, the first rate men, deferred 
to him. Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, he was convinc- 
ing to them. He immediately justified himself with 
men and women of original insight. Young men 
realized the vivid quality of his intuition, but some of 
them cooled off; their logic disproved of his. He is 
a discussed man. Books have been written taking 
sides on his philosophy of the sex. He is one of the 
inevitables. He arrived and that by the things in his 
writings that have a race quality, things that fit in 
with the struggle of democracy in the world. There 
is something in Whitman which baffles us yet per- 
suades us ; so Tennyson found it. We accentuate our 
differences by our experiments. He shows that we 



202 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



are more alike than not alike. We are more noble 
than not noble. He was the advocate of the new hu- 
manities. He is the poet of democracy and the de- 
mocracy that repudiated him. He talked of the 
Americanization of the world. To Whitman the 
people are inevitably first, that is what the " Leaves 
of Grass " all come to. Carlyle spoke of Whitman 
as " one who thought he was a big man because he 
lived in a big country." When Matthew Arnold in 
Philadelphia was asked what he thought of Whitman, 
he replied, "Ah, what does Longfellow think of Whit- 
man? " 

Keats, with all his devotion to the antique and to 
Greek mythology, is a sensualist. He is gifted with 
the keenest, widest, and most delicate perceptions, 
sees, hears, feels, tastes, and inhales, all the varieties 
of glorious colors, of song, of silky texture, of fruit 
flavor, of flower fragrance, which nature offers. 

THE PERSONAL SIDE. 

Stevenson liked Kipling, though with many hesita- 
tions. 

Great literary men come in groups. 

Renan was France's most amiable and smiling 
sceptic. 

Ruskin was an Apostle of beauty and truth. He 
stood for a fine, high, heroic regimen. He had a 
deep enthusiasm for man. He and his works are full 
of an intense humanity. He worked for his higher 
nature. He had a pathetic career. Wealth is divine 
if divinely used. 



PHILOSOPHY AM) LITEEATUEE 203 



Once the roll of human splendor read thus: Homer, 
Hesiod, ^Eschylus, Euripides, Pericles, Plato, Virgil, 
Cicero, Caesar, Tacitus. The splendor of this cata- 
logue none will dare to deny ; but in modern times the 
book of fame has been opened and these are the 
names in it now: Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, Goethe, 
Heine, Schiller, Lessing, Bacon, Newton, Cuvier, 
Victor Hugo, Humboldt, Mueller, Darwin, Huxley, 
and Agassiz. 

At thirty-five Byron, one of the handsomest boys 
of his day, found his hair nearly white, his hands 
trembling like the hands of a man of eighty, his 
genius burned out. 

Goethe, the gifted German poet, whose autobiog- 
raphy calls the roll of many love affairs. 

"Henry Drummond " (by George Adam Smith) 
describes a life crowned with interests and activities 
and shows the fond extravagances which grief will 
weave into a dead friend's qualities. He showed a 
Christianity that was perfectly natural. There was a 
swing to his work and a brightness in his face. He 
seemed to carry no cares. He was unspoiled. He 
knew neither presumption nor timidity. There was 
no assumption of superiority, and no ambition to gain 
influence. He was one of the finest, most unselfish 
souls, most reverent you ever knew, but you would 
not call him a saint. He had a genius for friendship, 
he had such a humility, patience, and the power to 
trust. His gratitude and admiration were among the 
most beautiful features of his character. His style 
has the print of hard labor. He had a, mesmeric in- 



204 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



fluence, the most perfect, effortless command of every 
audience. He prepared his books. They were writ- 
ten with the thoroughness of a French stylist. He 
had a perfect way of telling stories. Men felt he was 
not a voice merely, but a friend. Drummond's scien- 
tific training gave him a sense for facts and an appre- 
ciation of evidence. A month or two before his 
death Drummond said that he wished his book 
" Natural Law in the Spiritual World " withdrawn 
from circulation. 

Tirelessly Drummond studied his Darwin, Wallace 
and Spencer, all those specialists who have scrutinized 
the world of matter, but he loved his Plato, his Paul, 
and his Kant, those who had explored the realm of 
mind. 

Society has left behind the sins of Robert Burns 
but joyfully carries forward his sweet songs. 

What Tennyson wrote he first was. 

Balzac claims to have originated two thousand 
characters. They are children of his fancy. He un- 
dertook to analyze and classify man and his life. He 
clothed the vulgar, the sensual, the vicious, and the 
vile in the white robes of literature and fine writings 
and ornamented them with the gold and jewels and 
sparkling figures of epigrams and classical allusions. 

John Fiske constantly carried a load of atmosphere. 
His " Through Nature'to God " is fine. 

Voltaire said of Rousseau, " He is like an oven that 
is too hot ; it burns everything that is put into it." 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 205 



Keats was an unfulfilled prophecy; Burns one 
whose life was a tragedy. What Raphael is in color, 
what Mozart is in music, that Burns is in song. Be- 
cause of debt he was in terror of a debtor's prison. 
He fell upon an untimely death. 

Jane Austen produced great art, and knew it not. 
No book published in her time bore her name on the 
title page. She never was lionized by society. She 
died at forty-two. It was sixty years before a biog- 
raphy was attempted or asked for. She sleeps in the 
Cathedral at Winchester. 

James Russell Lowell was a man of letters. He 
embraced literature as a profession. He was satu- 
rated with it. His power was moral impulse. The 
whole man was his power. There was much of the 
Greek in him, i. e., the sense of ordered beauty and 
art. He writes as if he were saturated with litera- 
ture. He added to the love of learning the love of 
expression, language, form, style. He was proof 
against dryness. He did fine work in a fine way. 
He was able to gather in and store up fine impres- 
sions. He belonged to the massive race. He is a 
great voice. A citizen in the republic of letters. He 
touched nothing that he did not adorn. 

Some men's writings have the quality of conveying 
personality. Men love them and they read them. 
They create friendship. 

Matthew Arnold admired the Zeitgeist, the " Time 
Spirit." Christianity so far as it is true at all is a 
truth of human nature, not of theology. Matthew 
Arnold is a master of a grand style. He is a teacher. 



206 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



He derived from his father a certain authority of 
tone. He almost succeeded in becoming himself 
what he delineated in Goethe. To him " God is the 
stream of tendency, — not ourselves, which makes for 
righteousness." " Religion is morality touched with 
emotion." " The emotions in the Christian religion 
are excited by ideas, not facts." He advocates " sweet 
reasonableness " as the rule of human life. What do 
we get from Matthew Arnold? A sense of refine- 
ment. He is an agnostic. He gives strength to scep- 
ticism. He gives faith no new nerve. Hope no new 
light. He gives no new power to help bear the bur- 
dens of life. 

George Eliot. It is rare to find an intellect so 
skilled in the analysis of psychological problems, so 
completely at home in the delineation of character. 
She finds comparison a great help in understanding 
men and things. Her personality tinged all she 
wrote. 

Some people fill the whole place with an oppressive 
atmosphere. They give you the nightmare. 

Nathaniel Hawthorne. The data for a biography 
are very few. His career was tranquil and unevent- 
ful. He lived a simple life; few vicissitudes or vari- 
ations in it. He lived in a provincial and rural com- 
munity. He produced but little, four novels, five 
volumes of short tales, a collection of sketches. 
He was a master of expression. He was so modest. 
The flower of art blooms only where the soil is deep. 
The cold bright air of New England seems to blow 
through his pages. It is a tonic atmosphere. He 
was born in Salem, Massachusetts, July 4, 1804. His 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 207 



ancestors persecuted the Quakers and witches. His 
was an unperplexed intellect. He was not expansive 
nor imaginative. He was forty when " The Scarlet 
Letter " was published. There is a strain of gener- 
ous indolence in his writings. Lay up treasures of 
pleasant remembrances for coming old age. Master- 
pieces in his short-stories are " Melvin's Burial," 
" Rappacini's Daughter," " Young Goodman Brown," 
"A Rill from the Town Pump," "The Village 
Uncle," " The Chippings with a Chisel." He takes 
human nature seriously. Confessions which the soul 
makes to itself. He had a relish of gloomy subjects. 
He likes their rich duskiness of color, their pictur- 
esqueness. These lovely conversations with conscience, 
this habit of seeing sin everywhere, and hell always 
gaping open, this perpetually living in a downward 
world, well, it is not my choice, even if it is Puritanic. 

Poe writes : " ' The Pilgrim's Progress ' is a ridicu- 
lously overrated book." 

Of Voltaire, Gibbon says: " It was assuredly in his 
power to amuse the reader with a gallery of portraits 
and a collection of anecdotes." It was a proof, not 
of merit, but of success. 

Swift was the famous Dean of St. Patrick. He 
was born in Dublin. His friendships were rather an- 
nexations than alliances. Swift wrote " The Tale of 
a Tub," "The Battle of the Books," "Gulliver's 
Travels." 

Samuel Johnson was born in Lichfield, 1769. He 
was always peculiar. Disease and superstition stood 
by his cradle and never quitted him during life. The 



208 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCB 



demon of hypochondria was always lying in wait for 
him. Disease had scarred and disfigured features 
otherwise regular and impressive. It seriously in- 
jured his eyes, destroying the sight of one entirely. 
His father used to open book stalls in the large towns 
on fair days. He asked Samuel one day to take his 
place and sell books at a stall at Uttoxeter, for he was 
ill, but the boy's pride made him refuse. Fifty years 
after he went to the spot and stood all day with un- 
covered head before the stall, exposed to the sneers of 
the bystanders and the inclemency of the weather. 
He was doing penance for the sin of disobedience. 
He showed the remorse of a fine character. He had 
large physical and mental appetite. He gorged books. 
He was a man of great powers. Wesley was his con- 
temporary, six years older than he. The greatest 
chance in those days for a poor man was through the 
Church, but Johnson thought that " a tavern chair " 
was a better arena than a pulpit for the utterance of 
his message to mankind. When twenty-six he mar- 
ried a widow of forty-six. He said it was a love 
match on both sides. He had a huge contempt for 
foppery. He became an inmate of " Grub Street." 
He issued his dictionary, and published " The Ram- 
bler." He became a hero and was so worshipped. 
Johnson could be insolent. The world of literature 
has become too large to-day for an authority. Gold- 
smith urged that Boswell wished to make a monarchy 
of what ought to be a republic. He was known as 
" Dictionary Johnson." When Samuel Johnson sent 
the last page of his dictionary to his publisher, he 
asked the messenger what the publisher said. He 
said, " Thank God, I am done with him." " I am 
glad," replied Johnson, " that he thanks God for any- 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 209 



thing." George III granted Johnson a pension of 
three hundred pounds a year. Would he take it? 
He did — though in his dictionary he had defined a 
pension as " generally understood to mean pay given 
to a state hireling for treason to his country." He 
some way made it out that he did not come within 
that definition. Strange eccentricities had now be- 
come a second nature to him. He was supposed to 
be in his right place in a Grub Street pot-house. He 
was a bear, and he was a very good hater. He could 
always escape from himself to the society of his 
friends and admirers. He laid down laws to his dis- 
ciples collected in a tavern instead of academic groves. 
Especially he was in all his glory at the club. Elec- 
tion to the club was a great honor. Boswell, a Scots- 
man, had come to London eager for the acquaintance 
of literary magnates. " Mr. Johnson," he said, " I 
do indeed come from Scotland ; but I cannot help it." 
Boswell told Johnson he had heard a Quaker woman 
preach. " A woman preaching," said Johnson, " is 
like a dog's walking on his hind legs. It is not done 
well; but you are surprised to find it done at all." He 
could be biting: " It is easier to write that book than 
to read it." " No, sir: the Irish are a fair people; they 
never speak well of one another." " Well, sir, God 
made Scotland." " Certainly, but we must remember 
He made it for Scotsmen." 

Oliver Goldsmith was born 1728, in Ireland. He 
earned the world's gratitude. He was an optimist, 
and avoided the darker problems of existence. 
Cheerfulness shines like sunshine in his writings. He 
carried no weapon but his heart. He had a happy 
knack of enjoying the present hour. " The Vicar of 



210 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



Wakefield " follows structurally the lines of the Book 
of Job. 

When by the order of Lord Elgin marbles were 
taken from the Parthenon to England to the British 
Museum, Byron was indignant and wrote " The 
Curse of Minerva." But the marbles were molder- 
ing at Athens. They are now preserved with great 
care in the British Museum. Of Byron's face it was 
said by Scott, " His countenance was a thing to 
dream of." 

Thomas de Quincey was born 1785, near Man- 
chester, England. It was while he was in school at 
Oxford that he began to take opium. The effect was 
divine. It was an intellectual exhilaration and stimu- 
lant. Coleridge used opium, too. Some of his 
dreams as an opium eater were hideous and it pro- 
duced a suicidal tendency. De Quincey's self-expo- 
sure is in " The Confessions of an English Opium 
Eater." 

Cowper, the poet of the religious revival. Asso- 
ciated with Wesley and Whitefield. Born in 1731 in 
his father's rectory, Berkhamstead. The Church was 
little better than a political force. Of humanity, 
there was as little as of religion. It was the age of 
criminal law, which hanged men for petty thefts ; im- 
prisoned for life a debtor; used the stocks and pil- 
lory; put the heads of traitors on Temple Bar. The 
slave trade prevailed, and religious people took part 
in it without scruples. Wesley was twenty-eight and 
Whitefield was seventeen when Cowper was born. 
At thirty-two he went mad and attempted suicide. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 211 



John Bunyan was the greatest English dramatist of 
life. 

Browning's poetry did not yield him a livelihood. 
From his father he constantly received enough to live 
on. His father made his life-work possible, made it 
possible for him to do his best. His mother was de- 
voutly religious, a Congregationalist, a dissenter. 
His education was on the elective system, and by 
private tutors. He was not a university man. But 
his education was a success. His first poem " Paul- 
ine " appeared before he was twenty-one. His aunt 
gave him the money to publish it. Not a single copy 
was sold. The unbound sheets came home to roost. 
Its commercial value was zero. A copy of it, how- 
ever, the other day sold for $2,400. His second 
poem " Paracelsus " written when he was twenty- 
three. It attracted no general attention although en- 
thusiastically reviewed by John Forster. Italy was 
the land of his inspiration. The scenes of " Pippa 
Passes " he located there. Browning was born 1812. 
After 1840 for thirty years he produced poetry of 
the highest order. The story of his married life is 
one of the greatest of love stories in the world's his- 
tory (Wm. Lyon Phelps in " How to Know 
Browning"). It is like the examples of Heloise and 
Abelard, Aucassin and Nicolette, Paul and Virginia. 
He was six years his wife's junior. Mrs. Browning 
was the idol of the household and everything revolved 
around her. The only cloud in Mrs. Browning's 
mind was the (to her) incomprehensible neglect of 
her husband by the public. At the time of their mar- 
riage it was commonly said that a young literary man 
had eloped with a poetess. During their married life 



212 A BOOK OF REMEMBKANCE 



her books went invariably into many editions while 
his did not sell at all. Even to the last day of 
Browning's earthly existence, her poems far outsold 
his — to his unspeakable delight. 

" George Bernard Shaw " by Archibald Henderson 
of the University of North Carolina. Observe his 
thoughtful laughter, and his elfish impudence, as well 
as his remarkable talent. It takes a book to intro- 
duce him and a big book at that, yes, a work of 
twenty volumes. His whimsicalities find gay expres- 
sion which delights his auditors. He deserves enthu- 
siastic championship. Shaw is a socialist, a publicist, 
an economist. He is up to the chin in the life of his 
times. He is identified with the last quarter of the 
nineteenth century and the first decade of the 
twentieth century. Shaw pointed out the magnitude 
of writing his biography. He says of himself: "I 
have lived three centuries." What is his place in the 
providential order of the world? His career may 
only be begun. There may be a series of master- 
pieces yet before him. His humor and courage have 
cleansed the intellect of to-day. Mr. Shaw was fond 
of saying: " I am a typical Irishman." His lineal 
ancestor, Captain William Shaw, was of Scotch de- 
scent. He is a free thinker, and equally free writer 
and speaker. He coats the pill of the satirist with the 
sugar of the artist. Oscar Wilde and Bernard Shaw 
both born in Dublin, Ireland. Shaw was born July 
26, 1856. He is not an exponent of a school. He 
himself is a school. Shaw says: "All autobiogra- 
phies are lies," — deliberate lies. Shaw, who was once 
a trembling novice, became a telling platform orator 
with a phenomenal faculty of telling speech, easy, 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUKE 213 



nonchalant, resourceful, instantaneous in repartee, 
sublime in audacity, brilliant, extraordinary, yet a 
self-made man. He said, " Anybody can get my skill 
at the same price." Against Bradlaugh he would 
have been outclassed. He so roused people from 
their stupor that they called him names. The truth 
is that Shaw stands for certain principles. His is the 
belief of the unbeliever, the principle of the unprin- 
cipled, the faith of the sceptic. Unfettered he stands 
forth as a great and free spirit. Shaw holds that 
Shakespeare's supreme power lies in his " Enormous 
command of word music which gives fascination to 
his most blackguardly repartees and sublimity to his 
hollowest platitudes." Of his play " Csesar and Cleo- 
patra" he says: "I am going to give Shakespeare a 
lead." 

Scott and Moore are positive literary personifica- 
tions of Scotland and Ireland. 

George Brandes, an arch-pedant. 

Goethe was an ardent Pantheist. Goethe's life be- 
comes fuller from the moment Schiller enters into it. 
But he should have gotten more out of Schiller's 
death than he did. He should have profited more by 
it. But Goethe refused sorrow entrance into his life. 
That was his custom, determinedly to refuse sorrow. 
If he had allowed sorrow to enter into him and to be- 
come part of himself the result would have been a re- 
newal of youth, it would have increased his poetical 
productivity. 

John Locke, the philosopher, was born 1632. 
Famous by his essay on "The Human Understand- 



214 A BOOK OP EEMEMBEANCE 



ing." His character may alternately attract and re- 
pel, but it is signally masterful. 

Moore is the personification of spiritualized sensual- 
ity. He dazzles our minds with sunshine, deafens 
with the song of the nightingale and drowns them in 
sweetness. We live with him in. endless dreams of 
things, flowers, rainbows, smiles, blushes, tears, 
kisses. 

In 1843 Wordsworth and Dickens met for the first 
time. A mutual friend asked Wordsworth what he 
thought of Dickens. He answered: " While I am not 
much given to turn critic on people I meet, I will an- 
swer your question. I candidly avow that I thought 
him very talkative, a vulgar young man, but I dare 
say he may be clever. Mind, I don't want to say a 
word against him, for I have never read a line he has 
written." The same man asked Dickens how he liked 
the Poet Laureate. " Like him ? Not at all. He is 
a dreadful old ass." 

Old Wordsworth when Keats (by persuasion of 
friends) recited to him the famous "Hymn to Pan" 
from the first book of his " Endymion " only re- 
marked: "It is a pretty piece of Paganism." This 
was meant to be a verdict harsh and scathing. Oh, 
Jealousy ! 

Shelley stands for radical materialism. If in 1820 
the question had been asked, "Who is Shelley?" 
the answer would have been, "A bad poet with 
shocking principles and a worse than doubtful char- 
acter." He was born 1792. Buried in Rome. Shel- 
ley is the author only of the few elect. While sailing 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUKE 215 



from Leghorn to Lerice he perished in a sudden gale ; 
his body was washed, an almost unrecognizable 
corpse, on shore. The Tuscan law required any ob- 
ject cast on shore to be burned. Shelley's body was 
committed to the flames by Byron and Trelawney, 
with Grecian and pagan observances that were in har- 
mony with his character. Frankincense, lime, salt 
and oil were poured on the fuel. The day was beau- 
tiful and the surroundings were glorious. The flame 
arose golden and towering. The body was consumed, 
but to the surprise of all, the heart remained entire. 
The ashes were removed and deposited near the 
Pyramids of Cestius in Rome, which Shelley had 
spoken of as an ideal resting place. Byron was made 
his spiritual heir. " Cor Cordium " on his tombstone, 
" heart of hearts." 

Oliver Wendell Holmes' atmosphere permeates all 
Boston. He represented, interpreted Boston. He 
himself was Boston epitomized. He was an abridge- 
ment of Boston. The best of Boston concentrated in 
a human form. To read his " Autocrat " is an intel- 
lectual, aesthetic delight. His ideals were all of the 
old time. 

Dickens was born 1812. Although indignant at the 
sight of slavery when he was in the United States of 
America, yet twenty years after, during the Civil 
War, his sympathies were with the cause of the 
South and slavery in its conflict with the " Mad and 
villainous North." 

Richard Bentley, a scholar in the classics. Gold- 
smith called him the Terence of England. He was 
naturally lofty. He played a large part in the move- 



216 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



ment to restore ancient literature to the modern 
world. Bentley says: "The wit and the genius of 
these old heathen beguile me." So he gave his life 
to resurrecting them and reediting them, and to the 
purification of the classical text. 

SIDE LIGHTS. 

Fly off on a tangent — Paul did and his tangents are 
often his best writings. 

It is said that " every bright idea of Benvenuto's 
is an idea and a half." He had a keen sense of living 
values. 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Ruskin furnishes his readers with a lens through 
which all natural objects are glorified. 

The story is told of Plato that when he was a child, 
bees alighted on his lips as he slept and left their 
honey there without a particle of their sting. A pro- 
phetic symbol of the coming man. 

THE CLASSICS. 

In translating Homer, Matthew Arnold sums up 
the literary characteristics of the great poet in these 
words: "Homer is rapid in his movements; Homer 
is plain in his words; Homer is rich in his style; 
Homer is simple in his ideas; Homer is noble in his 
manner and his writing is beautiful as a sum total." 
That is also a description of St. Luke. 

Aspasia says of Homer: "Homer nourishes my 
fancy, animates my dreams, awakens me in the morn- 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 217 



ing, marches with me, sails with me, teaches me 
morals, teaches me languages, teaches me music and 
philosophy and war." 

The Greeks wrought up the Greek language into 
epics and lyrics, and dramas and histories and ora- 
tions as incomparable in form and beauty as their 
temples and statues. 

When the great Athenian dramatists came upon the 
stage, they found a whole world of poetry and knowl- 
edge lying inchoate in myth and tradition. They 
worked this up into cosmos and gave the world mas- 
terpieces. They gave it immortal form. 

Pericles, Aspasia, Socrates, these are three great 
names in history and philosophy. " What is its 
use? " was the Socratic question. Socrates had many 
pupils who have been the world's teachers ; Plato and 
Aristotle are two of the best known. 

What Shakespeare gave was a many-sided repre- 
sentation of life. What the Greek dramatists gave 
was an interpretation of life. 

Plato was an idealist, yet he was rooted. 

Mark the ridicule of Aristophanes, the Greek 
Punch. Truth was conveyed through the lips of his 
characters on the stage. 

Virgil's prophecy of the Saviour's birth in the 
fourth Eclogue proves that the hopes of Christians 
and pagans have many ideals in common. They saw 
a golden age coming. 



218 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANOE 



The Greek language perfected by Plato and 
Demosthenes and other Greek scholars as the fittest 
vehicle of noble thought was diffused through the 
ancient world by the merchants of commerce and by 
the conquests of Alexander. It prepared the way for 
the New Testament, for the Book of Christ. It be- 
came the universal language. 

What Plato did for Socrates, Mencius did for Con- 
fucius, Fitzgerald for Khayyam. 

Homer's Iliad is almost faultless; there is scarcely 
a feeble line in it. 

England has two books, — one which she made 
(Shakespeare), one which has made her (the Bible). 

To acquire style, Demosthenes copied seven times 
the works of Thucydides the great historian. 

The men representative of Latin prose style are 
Cicero, Livy, Juvenal, Tacitus. 

In the story of the ten years' wandering of 
Odysseus of Ithaca, beauty preponderates over terror 
because the powers with which Odysseus has to do are 
not mere forces of nature but spiritual beings who 
take an interest for or against him in his fate. All 
the forces of nature are divine and conscious agents. 
To the Greeks the winds are persons, not elements. 
The human passions were also spiritual persons to 
the Greeks. Aphrodite, mother of Eros, incarnates 
the passions of love, Ares the lust of war, Athene 
wisdom, Apollo music and the arts. The Greek re- 
ligion was the foundation of society. The Greek 
gods were human beings like themselves, though su- 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEBATUBE 219 



perior. They begat sons and daughters. Between 
them and mankind there was no impassable gulf. 
From Hercules, the son of Zeus, was descended the 
Dorian race, the Ionian from Ion, son of Apollo. 
Then the gods were founders of society. The state 
itself was, in a sense, the Church to the Greeks. The 
gods were mixed up in everything. Their advice 
was sought in everything. It was in ritual and art, 
not in propositions that the Greek religion expressed 
itself. It was closer, in this respect, to the Roman 
Catholic religion than to the Protestant. They took 
the natural emotions excited by the birth of the spring 
and connected them with the worship of Dionysius 
and gave them form. Moments of nature were 
seized and idealized. The whole life of man, in its 
relation to nature and society, was conceived as de- 
rived from and dependent upon his gods. His re- 
ligion was expressed in his festival. 

Pindar was one of the musical voices. His lyre 
struck one chord, but it was a powerful chord, the 
love of home. 

The " Odyssey " is the greatest out-of-door poem 
in literature. It is an epic of the sea. 

Matthew Arnold takes us to Homer as a model to 
show us the art of writing. " Homer has the sim- 
plicity of reality, the directness of unconscious ex- 
pression, the fullness of a vast range of life." 

The Homeric Problems: the origin, date, author- 
ity, and history of the Iliad and Odyssey provide a 
great problem. They have exercised great minds; 
some have smashed the two great epics into frag- 



220 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



ments of many different poets ages apart. The prob- 
lem is complex and requires linguistic scholarship, 
archaeology, history, religion, geography, anthology, 
and all forms of comparative sciences. The majority 
of the most learned Hellenists of Germany and of 
Britain declare that " Homer " cannot be the name 
of any one person at all. The Iliad was likely com- 
posed eight or nine hundred years before Christ. It 
was handed down orally for many generations. 

Edmund Burke calls the " Venerable Bede " the 
father of English learning. He was the flower of a 
monastic institution. Born 673 a. d. His greatest 
work was his forty volumes of Ecclesiastical History. 
He was the originator of English history. His style 
has much of the charm of Biblical prose. Bede's 
studies were encyclopedic in character. He was Bible 
made. It was Alfred the Great who opened the way 
for the creation of a true English literature for the 
people. English literature lost much under the Dan- 
ish marauders. Bede's translation of the Gospel of 
John was lost. 

Cervantes' " Don Quixote," even in its natural as- 
pects, is a book that has all the dimensions of life, 
personal, geographical, historical, emotional, moral. 
It sweats Spain as an olive does oil. Character is 
deeper than circumstances. Don Quixote is one of 
the world's heroes. In him the soul's the thing. The 
book makes the most destructive impeachment of life. 
The word Quixotic has become a familiar term in all 
languages. The height of the ridiculous. 

Virgil, the poet of Rome. The morning star of the 
Latin races. He was the climax of Latin genius. He 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 221 



was the son of a small farmer in the north of Italy. 
Buried at Naples. Virgil used the poetic art to ideal- 
ize. As the world had been given to Rome to rule, 
Rome had been given to Virgil to be the empire of 
his song. This was his destiny. He was by instinct 
and temperament a ritualist. Read the " Georgics," 
and " ^Eneid " of Virgil. This last is a world poem; 
it is his greatest. The Virgilian world: Rome at the 
summit of her empire, rising from those seven cen- 
turies of interminable strain. The " ^Eneid " is the 
book of the old world. Virgil was the lord of lan- 
guage. He is a personal writer. His whole story is 
about himself. A diary of privacies. 

" Nothing in Excess " was the motto inscribed over 
the Temple of Delphi, i. e., ideal proportion. 

The period stretching from Homer to Theocritus 
was the true glory of Greece. The Greek genius, un- 
changed from the remotest antiquity, asserts itself to- 
day in artistic and intellectual tendencies that promise 
to become achievements of like character with those 
that were the glory of ancient Greece. 

The great Victorian poets are steeped in Greek 
study. 

iEschylus, Sophocles, and Aristophanes still inter- 
est us, because their plays deal with humanity and the 
nature of man is unchanging. 

In testing the beauty of form the Greeks submitted 
the written word, prose and verse alike, to the imme- 
diate judgment of the ear. 



222 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



A classic is a work that has received the suffrage 
of generations. It is approved. It has a permanent 
interest. It has literary merit. It is notable. It has 
permanent value. It has worth and importance. It 
is wheat left on the threshing-floor of time. It is 
permanent literature, like " Don Quixote " and 
" Pilgrim's Progress." Leaders of thought approve 
it. The classics of the world are those works in 
which geniuses of the world have most effectively 
suggested genuine and vital emotions. 

From a purely literary point of view the Bible is 
the most important prose work in the language. It 
is the great classic. It has shaped the faith and for- 
tunes of all Europe and America. Coleridge says: 
" Intense study of the Bible will keep any writer from 
being vulgar in point of style." The New Testa- 
ment, from a literary standpoint, is infinitely less in- 
teresting than the Old Testament. 

Time moves so swiftly that we have begun to re- 
gard the works of Thackeray, Dickens, Hawthorne, 
Browning, and Tennyson as among the classics. 
They are so, however, by conduct and merit rather 
than by age. Certainly we should be emotionally and 
spiritually poorer without the story of Hester Prynne 
and Arthur Dimmesdale between whom the Scarlet 
Letter glowed balefully: without Hilda in her tower 
and poor Miriam bereft of her fawn below; to have 
failed to share the trial of Mr. Pickwick for breach 
of promise; to have lived without knowing the in- 
imitable Sam Weller; and the juicy Micawber, the 
philanthropic Mrs. Jellyby, and the airy Harold 
Skimpole is to have failed of acquaintances that 
brighten existence. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEBATUKE 223 



Victor Hugo gives his list of the sovereigns of the 
world's roll of creators and poets. " Homer, ^Eschy- 
lus, Sophocles, Lucretius, Virgil, Horace, Dante, 
Shakespeare, Rabelais, Moliere, Corneille, Voltaire." 
His French audience rise and cry simultaneously — 
"And Victor Hugo!" 

The sentences of Seneca are stimulating to the in- 
tellect; the sentences of Epictetus are fortifying to 
the character; the sentences of Marcus Aurelius find 
their way to the soul. With all his morality Marcus 
Aurelius stretched his hands for something beyond. 
He was not satisfied. 

Greek jests are very limited in quantity and quality. 

Study Tennyson, Browning, Swinburne, Morris. 
They suggest classic themes. Tennyson is full of 
classical echoes. 

Alexander carried his Homer with him every- 
where. There is a charm and power in simplicity. 

NARRATIVE. 

All the world loves a story. 

The masters of prose in the nineteenth century in- 
cluded great and splendid novelists, Scott, Jane Aus- 
ten, Thackeray, Dickens, George Eliot, Stevenson. 
(Note his tales of the heather and the sea; his pro- 
found and accurate analysis of character.) All moral 
teachers. 

In fiction Dickens and Thackeray are the two great 
giants of the Victorian Age, as Tennyson and Brown- 



224 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBANCE 



ing are in poetry. They brought sunshine into thou- 
sands of shadowed hearts. What would the world 
be without them? Their human sympathy, immortal 
caricature, abounding humor. Thackeray's " Vanity 
Fair," and " Henry Esmond " are pure gold. 

Jane Austen and George Eliot are the only women 
novelists placed in first rank Miss Austen's " Pride 
and Prejudice " of solid worth. Her style is so per- 
fectly adapted to her matter that to the uninitiated it 
seems just no style at all. Her characters belong to 
our intimate acquaintances. 

George Eliot's best books are her first. An in- 
tensely serious woman. Her career something of an 
anti-climax. She drifted away from the great cur- 
rents of art towards the dreary doldrums of philoso- 
phy and sociology. 

Thomas Hardy, the greatest pessimist of the age. 
He is the spokesman of humanity's pain. He will 
speak for the chained Prometheus. But he has hu- 
mor deliciously keen and true. He touches the 
springs of loving laughter in our hearts. Read his 
story of " The Return of the Native." 

Tell the stories of the great masterpieces of litera- 
ture. Tell them to yourself first, then tell them to 
others; this will help in the comprehension and ap- 
preciation of the masterpieces. An example of how 
to tell these stories is Charles Kingsley's " Stories of 
Greek Heroes " for his children. 

The story of the ewe lamb indicted the guilty mon- 
arch, David. Fiction has been one of life's great 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 225 



teachers. Jesus adopted the parable as His favorite 
method of teaching. The most popular story in liter- 
ature is the story of the Prodigal Son. It has fasci- 
nated generations, softened the races of mankind. It 
will yet win the wandering world back to the Divine 
Father. 

Sir Walter Scott is the prince of prose romancers. 
His Waverley Novels had millions of readers. They 
have seen their fourth generation. They contain 
Scotland as " Don Quixote " contains Spain. He re- 
vivified the times he treated in enduring colors. He 
gave charm to Loch Katrine. He made his readers 
live the life. Walter Scott both as a poet and novel- 
ist was self-educated. His was sheer power of 
genius. His world is a world full of people. There 
is something theatrical in his faculty of depicting. 
The great qualities of Scott's Waverley Novels were: 
(a) Vivacity, (b) Emotional Power — (he liked 
strong deeds and strong men, and he liked strong 
emotions), (c) Creative Power. It is these things 
that make him first of romancers as Shakespeare is 
first of dramatists. 

The school of the romanticist, Alfred de Vigny, 
Gautier, Balzac, Victor Hugo, Georges Sand, Alfred 
de Musset. 

"David Harum " is popular. Why? Because it 
contains one thoroughly racy character. The rest is 
naught. 

Narrative is the simplest form of literature. Yet 
how few excel in narrative? Where they do excel 
in it their works are immortal. Examples : " The 



226 A BOOK OP BEMEMBKANCE 



Arabian Nights," "Don Quixote" (Cervantes), 
"Robinson Crusoe" (Defoe), "Tales from Shake- 
speare" (Lamb), "Paul and Virginia" (St. Pierre), 
"The Stone Mason of Saint Point" (Lamartine), 
"A Dog of Flanders" (Ouida). Study these for 
the cultivation of style in effective narrative. 

Great novels are Christian forces. 

Is there an original story? Take the Irish bull: 
" A man said I would have been a very handsome 
man, but they changed me in the cradle." That comes 
from Don Quixote and is Spanish. But Cervantes 
borrowed it from the Greeks of the fourth century 
and the Greeks stole it from the Egyptians hundreds 
of years back. 

Guy de Maupassant knew nothing about humor, 
for he did not find it in life. No one less bookish 
than he. He was a simplifier. There is no research 
in his vocabulary. He never required a rare word. 
He does not " Orchestrate," he has not inherited the 
" organ pipes " of Flaubert. He had simply a me- 
chanical existence. 

The plea of Jeanie Deans before the Queen for the 
life of her condemned sister is one of the most ele- 
vated pleas in all literature. It is so eloquent in 
pathos and so true in human nature, Scott outdid 
himself ("Heart of Midlothian"). Jeanie Deans is 
the strongest woman in Scott's gallery. 

Boccaccio, the Italian, in his own country brought 
his native language to perfection. He collected the 
current tales of his age. These he decorated with 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATUEE 227 



new circumstances, and delivered in a style that has 
no parallel for elegance, naivete, and grace. The 
first whole editing was translated into English 1620. 
In England its effects were powerful. From it 
Chaucer adopted the forms in which he enclosed his 
tales, and the general manner of his stories. In some 
instances he simply versifies the novels of the Italian. 
In 1566 Paynter printed many of Boccaccio's stories 
in English in his work called " The Palace of Pleas- 
ure." These are the pages of which Shakespeare 
made so much use. In France Boccaccio found early 
and illustrious imitators. Boccaccio's novel " Mel- 
chizedek the Jew and His Three Rings " furnished the 
foundation for the plot of " Nathan the Wise," the 
masterpiece of Eessing, the great founder of the Ger- 
man drama. 

Daniel Defoe was despised by the whole guild of 
respectable writers of his day. He was despised as 
an illiterate fellow, a vulgar huckster. " Robinson 
Crusoe " has lived longest because it lives most. It 
is his masterpiece. There we have his genius real- 
ized. Novelty has always been a source of interest. 
He had the unrivalled genius of " lying like the 
truth." The central idea round which Robinson Cru- 
soe is organized is the position of a man cast ashore 
on a desert island, abandoned to his own resources, 
suddenly shot beyond help or counsel from his fel- 
lowmen. His perplexities unexpected; and his ex- 
pedients for meeting them unexpected. Yet the per- 
plexities and expedients so real and lifelike that 
when we are told of them we wonder we have not 
thought of them before. Defoe had the genius of 
circumstance and invention, a genius for lying like 



228 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



the truth. The subject had fascinated him. He was 
a man who gave himself up to the luxury of grieving. 

When Kipling takes three average soldiers of the 
line (The Black Riders), ignorant, lying, swearing, 
dog-fighting, smoking, and by telling of them holds 
a world in throes, that is art. It is high art. To be 
able to appreciate this is the next thing to being able 
to do it yourself. Kipling himself is quite a com- 
monplace person. He is neither handsome nor mag- 
netic. He is plain and manly. He is a marvel of 
insight. Keep close to the ground as a writer, if you 
would hold people. Ring true. 

WORDS. 

Henry Drummond lays down this rule by which to 
judge a man, viz., — The words he uses most. We 
each have a small set or stock of words, which al- 
though we are scarcely aware of it we always work 
with. They express all that we mean by life. They 
have become ours by natural selection; so true is this 
that it may be roughly said " our vocabulary is our 
history," " our favorite words are ourselves." So 
true is this that Drummond undertook to unlock and 
interpret Christ Himself by His favorite words. 
They are simple and few. Some half dozen embrace 
His theology. Such words as these, "Life," 
"Love," "Trust," "Father." These were central 
words with Him. Around these revolve all the du- 
ties He enjoins, all the grand hopes He begets, all the 
inspiring relationships into which He invites. 
Around these revolve all that perfect life of His, 
which He places before mankind as a complete ex- 
ample. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 229 



Shakespeare used twenty-five thousand words. 
The American writers use four thousand. 

Language is fossil poetry, — example, " Sincere " 
means " Without Wax," pure strained honey, trans- 
parent. The man who coined that word had a poet's 
feeling and the poet's eye. 

It takes a great many years of practice to become 
an artist in words. 

Milton uses thirteen thousand one hundred words 
and it is estimated that the Bible employs only six 
thousand. 

There is but a handful of real English words be- 
ginning with the letter " P." 

Dionysius says: "There is a marvellous attraction 
and enthralling charm in appropriate and striking 
words. Beautiful words are the very and peculiar 
light of the mind." 

Robert Louis Stevenson, that beautiful master of 
words, noted for his dexterity and grace, says : " I 
lived with words." 

RELIGION IN BOOKS. 

Robert Browning is a sure witness, and so is 
Tennyson. 

Mr. Chesterton in his brilliant monograph on H. 
G. Wells says : " Paganism deals always with a light 
shining on things; Christianity with a light shining 



230 A BOOK OF EEMEMBKANCE 



through things. That is why the whole renascence 
coloring is opaque, the whole of pre-Raphaelite color- 
ing transparent." 

Goethe, Dante, Hawthorne, Longfellow, Brown- 
ing, Shakespeare, Tennyson, Carlyle, Lessing, all 
masters of literature! They all put themselves back 
of the doctrine that " as a man's desires are so is the 
man." 

In literature of the best order you have the great 
facts and principles of the Bible reproduced and given 
a new life on earth. I read in Shakespeare the maj- 
esty of the moral law; in Victor Hugo the sacredness 
of childhood; in Goethe the glory of renunciation; in 
Wordsworth the joy of humility; in Tennyson the 
triumph of immortal love; in Browning the courage 
of faith; in Thackeray the ugliness of hypocrisy and 
the beauty of forgiveness; in George Eliot the su- 
premacy of duty; in Dickens the divinity of kind- 
ness; and in Ruskin the dignity of service. Irving 
teaches us the lesson of simple-hearted cheerfulness; 
Hawthorne teaches us the intense reality of the inner 
life and the hatefulness of sin; Longfellow gives us 
the soft music of tranquil hope and earnest endeavor; 
Lowell makes us feel that we must give ourselves to 
our fellowmen if we would bless them; Whittier 
sings to us of human brotherhood and divine father- 
hood. Are not these Christian lessons and sermons? 

If you deal in literature you will deal in life. You 
will be practical and helpful and vital. Literature is 
life, life written up, and made understandable and 
attractive. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 231 



ETHICS. 

Four of Browning's fundamental articles of faith 
are: 

1. The doctrine of elective affinities. 

2. The doctrine of success through failure. 

3. The doctrine that time is measured, not by the 
day and calendar, but by the intensity of spiritual ex- 
periences. 

4. The doctrine that life on earth is a trial and 
a test of what will be in the higher and happier de- 
velopment when the soul is freed from the limitations 
of time and space. 

Emerson had not warmth enough in him to make 
him a religious enthusiast; but he had patriotism and 
humanity to make him bear steadfast witness in the 
case of slavery. 

Amiel's Journal holds us with a tireless grasp ; the 
Confessions of Augustine can never die ; Jean Jacques 
Rousseau's book was a favorite of such a trinity of 
Apostles as Emerson, George Eliot, and Walt Whit- 
man; the Memoirs of Benvenuto Cellini have made 
a mediocre man immortal. Cellini never doubted his 
own infallibility. His religion was essentially a nat- 
ural religion, to love his friends, to bathe in sunshine, 
to preserve a right mental attitude, the receptive atti- 
tude, the attitude of gratitude, and to do his work, — 
those were for him the sum of life. 

Mazzini preached the gospel of social rights, Car- 
lyle the gospel of honest work, Matthew Arnold the 
gospel of culture, Emerson the gospel of vanity and 
optimism. 



232 



A BOOK OF KEMEMBBAJSCE 



Christ never despairs of making bad men good. 
Critics give " Les Miserables " the first place as a 
moral novel; a great soul is in the book, Jean Valjean. 

The three great themes of literature are God, Man, 
Nature. 

The saints and sensualists of literature. 

The Saints: Wordsworth, Emerson, Tennyson, 
Browning, Newman, Arnold. 

The Sensualists: Heine, Poe, De Maupassant, 
Byron, Burns. 

Has the book some intense, germinal, comprehen- 
sive idea that gives it vitality and character and as- 
sures it perpetuity? Is it so instinct with thought or 
personality as to throb and pulsate? The Essays of 
Emerson are of this high character. " In Memo- 
riam " is something more and greater than a mere 
poem. It is a compendium of theology and philoso- 
phy of the divinities and humanities in a new and 
striking form, furnishing food for thought. 

Literature does a great deal to create and hand 
down the best ideals of life. It gives these ideals the 
form of beauty. Great inspirations come from es- 
says, dramas, fiction, and poetry. George Eliot 
draws a Silas Marner, and we see that hideous thing 
a miser, weaned from gold coins by the softer and 
more tender gold of a little maiden's hair. Moliere 
paints a harridan and we shudder away from the pos- 
sibility of that same soulless passion. Dickens puts 
before us in full length the elder Dombey that we may 
behold the final melting of the man to whom business 
was a God. He is led by the potent hand of a little 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATURE 233 



girl back to the real life he had so forgotten, the life 
of simple affection and of household hearths. And 
Balzac's Grandet files into our memory forever the 
awful consequences of money lust, with its demoniac 
power of warping man's noblest nature. Literature 
of the first order is always doing this. The need for 
literature is doubled wherever and whenever men and 
women are in bondage to these idols of the world, the 
flesh, and the devil. 

To paint the activities of life is only to state a prob- 
lem ; and it is the mission of literature to offer a solu- 
tion. 

Emerson not only gives us thoughts but he gives 
us the habit of thinking. The will to think for our- 
selves. He shapes and elevates. 

Froude on Calvinism — " To liberal thinkers it is 
a system of belief incredible in itself, dishonoring to 
its object, and as intolerable as it has been intolerant. 
It makes human life a hideous nightmare." 

HUMOR. 

Humor humanizes the truth and makes it compan- 
ionable. 

W. W. Jacobs. The foremost British humorist of 
to-day. People who do not know him had better 
make his acquaintance at once. He keeps his char- 
acters at cross purposes with one another until it 
seems impossible that he should ever be able to 
straighten out their affairs. The climaxes to his 
farces are nothing less than masterly; they are up- 
roariously funny. He is a prince of good story tell- 



234 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



ing. He is droll, full of clean, wholesome humor. 
His books are good for tired mortals. They are as 
refreshing as a breath of sea air (Public Opinion), 
" He is constantly eliciting fresh admiration " (Spec- 
tator). 

1. At Sunwich Port. 2. Light Freights. 
3. Salthaven. 4. Short Cruises. 

5. Sailor's Knots. 6. Dialstone Lane. 

7. Ships Company. 8. Captains All. 

9. Odd Craft. 

THE REASONERS. 

Auguste Comte's six volumes in a nutshell is just 
this: Comte taught that man passes through three 
distinct mental stages in his development: 

1. Man attributes all phenomena to a personal 
God, and to this God he earnestly prays. 

2. Man believes in a " Supreme Essence," a 
" Universal Principle " or a " First Cause " and seeks 
to discover its hiding-place. 

3. Man seeks to hunt out the unknowable and is 
content to live and work for the positive present good, 
fully believing that what is best results to-morrow. 

There are no such things as rewards and punish- 
ments, as these terms are ordinarily used. There are 
only good results and bad results. We sow and we 
reap what we have sown. There is no God and Au- 
guste Comte is his prophet. 

Here we should give ourselves up to admiration. 
I feel ashamed of my coldness, when I see how others 
who only believe in His half-glory glow and en- 
kindle and become eloquent over Him, like Strauss 
and J. Stuart Mill, and Renan. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 235 



THE COMMON PEOPLE. 

To-day the people with their woes and griefs have 
found a standing in literature. In " Uncle Tom's 
Cabin " the candidate for hero worship is a slave ; in 
Dickens' " Oliver Twist " society hears the cry of the 
children. All literature has become permeated with 
sympathy for the under classes. Great authors no 
longer dare insult the common people. A host of 
writers like Victor Hugo, George Eliot, Charles 
Kingsley, and Walter Besant have given their whole 
souls to the softening the lot of humanity. To-day 
all literature is working for the once despised and un- 
befriended classes. 

SHAKESPEARE. 

" Shakespeare on the Stage," 2 vols., by William 
Winter. Actors: Macklin, Garrick, Kemble, Kean, 
MacCready, Henry Irving and Edwin Forrest, Ed- 
win Booth, Barrett, Mansfield, Mantell, Sothern, 
Charlotte Cushman as Lady Macbeth, Ellen Terry as 
Ophelia, Ada Rehan as Rosalind, Joseph Jefferson, 
Leslie Wallack, Kitty Clives, Sarah Siddons, Ellen 
Tree, Helena Faucit, Adelaide Neilson, Julia Mar- 
lowe, Helena Modjeska, Clara Morris as Lady Mac- 
beth. Influential actors make a great eleventh chap- 
ter. Winter worked over thirty years on these 
volumes. It is accumulated knowledge. It is a 
thesaurus for actors. The plays of Shakespeare af- 
ford the widest area for the display of an actor's art. 
If the history of the acting of each play were given 
(materials of narrative, commentary, stage direc- 
tions, stories of actors), it would take a whole library 
of books. The chronicles of the theatre are great and 
voluminous. For example, Edwin Booth acted six- 



236 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



teen parts, i. e., he was sixteen personages. That 
gave him a wide sphere, a big career, a wide life. 
He personated and acted Hamlet, Macbeth, King 
Lear, Othello, Iago, Shylock, Benedict, Petruchio, 
Richelieu, Lucius, Brutus, Bertuccio, Ruy Bias, and 
Don Caesar de Bazan. 

" Hamlet " has been current on the stage for three 
hundred years. Produced sixteen hundred times. 
Scores of actors have performed as the Prince of 
Denmark. 

There is no authentic historical basis for Macbeth, 
the most difficult of all Shakespeare's characters of 
adequate representation. 

How many actors has the character of Shylock 
made? Kean, MacCready, Wallack, Edwin Booth, 
Irving, Richard Mansfield. His face was marked, 
not with lines but with cordage. He incarnated mal- 
ice and revenge. 

Douglas Jerrold said of Kean as Shylock, " He im- 
pressed his audience like a chapter in Genesis." He 
was a representative Hebrew. Shylock proposed to 
gratify his revenge by committing murder under the 
sanction of law, legal form murder. 

" Othello/' Shakespeare found the material for 
this in a tale of Geraldi Cinthio, an Italian novelist, 
1504-1573. He greatly elaborated the borrowed sub- 
ject by his magnetic practical treatment of it. The 
scene is in Venice. It is sometimes called the best of 
Shakespeare's plays. 

" The Merchant of Venice " has been acted no 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 237 



fewer than one hundred thousand times. A great 
success; earned thirty-five million dollars. Its vital- 
ity comes from the fascinating charm of its style, its 
language of human feeling. Is there any woman that 
can vie with Portia? She is a type of blended in- 
tellect, brilliancy, and feminine fascination. 

Emerson says: "Shakespeare leans on the Bible. ,, 
His mind is saturated with Scripture. His writings 
have the marks of one who has read and absorbed the 
Bible. To take the Bible out of Shakespeare would 
leave a great gap ; it would leave a deep wound in the 
side. His writings contain more than twelve hundred 
references to Scripture. 

The tragic character of Shylock, less sinned against 
than sinning. He thrills and vivifies by comic, as 
well as terrific touches of character and emotion. 
Here Shakespeare has real insight for his appeals, for 
charity could not have been so keen, so profound, so 
approved, so durable in final impression if they had 
been put into the mouth of a good Jew. That truth 
should speak through Shylock was a keen conception 
of the poet. Shylock is immortal. His atrocities 
outweigh his injuries. 

The genius of Shakespeare fertilized the whole 
field of life, and brought into our literature phrases 
which sing like birds in the fragrant spring. 

For acting, Shakespeare's plays contain superflu- 
ous passages. 

" Romeo and Juliet " as a play is almost every fibre 
of it a dramatic amplification of " The Tragical His- 



238 A BOOK OF KEMEMBBANCE 



tory of Romeus and Juliet " a colored poem by Ar- 
thur Brooke, written 1562. It is a marvellous ampli- 
fication, ingenious, affluent, eloquent, fervent, but all 
the same the elaborate expression of an earlier work 
by another hand. His it is who says it best. 

" As You Like It " is founded on a novel by 
Thomas Lodge. " King Lear " is an ancient British 
story. It was told over and over. Sir Walter Scott 
says : " In the time in which King Lear was supposed 
to have lived, the British were probably painted and 
tattooed." 

" Julius Caesar." Shakespeare derived the histor- 
ical material for this play from " Plutarch's Lives," 
a translation by Thomas North (1530-1601). So 
closely did he follow North's text that he copied its 
errors. There were many old plays about Julius 
Caesar. 

Shylock is great. A perfect incarnation of hate. 
Portia a perfect incarnation of love. Antonio typifies 
constitutional melancholy; Gratiano is embodied 
glee; Launcelot is an image of drollery and animal 
happiness. 

"Hamlet" is an inspired and modern "Book of 
Job." 

Shakespeare's language is an endless succession of 
statues and pictures. 

The primary thing in Shakespeare is action. He 
seized all life as active in his thoughts. He led his 
own life as actions in himself, as a career. That is 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUKE 239 



his Englishry. He was practical. He put what he 
knew to use. He apprenticed himself to the best mas- 
ters of comedy and tragedy. He used what he found. 
He was successful. He had infinite interest in life. 
It is the power to live that makes men great. The 
theatre was to Shakespeare a profession, a career; he 
made himself head and master of it. He was a man 
of immense labor. By nature he was gentle and 
sweet. Observe his quiet and his friendliness of tem- 
perament; his companionableness and his reserve. 
Shakespeare's life is not a life that left much record 
of itself, but was full of golden silences. His was a 
genius that set towards reality. The wit combats of 
his characters are preeminently intellectual in their 
tone. Life should be conscious of its own signifi- 
cance. He embellished his scenes. He was at heart 
a dramatist, fascinated by life. Withal his was the 
aristocratic ideal of life. 

Shakespeare's diction has immense suggestiveness. 
He has the power of radiation through single expres- 
sions, a wonderful life and meaning. Swift defines 
style as " the right word in the right place." Sim- 
plicity, beauty, and vigor are essential features. Each 
sentence must be clear, vigorous, concise and chaste. 

I need mental oxygen, so I read Shakespeare. The 
man who does not read Shakespeare has dropped 
something out of his life. 

" Our myriad-minded Shakespeare." The surprise 
classic. To neglect him is like neglecting the sun- 
shine. He had the largest and the most comprehen- 
sive soul. If you neglect him, you are not intellectu- 
ally alive. 



240 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



Froude says " Plutarch was Shakespeare's chief 
authority for his Greeks and Romans." 

Shakespeare has given us a gallery of noble women. 
CARLYLE. 

Thomas Carlyle outside of the field of poetry and 
fiction was the great figure of the century. If his 
books were lost, his spirit would still live, for he so 
impressed himself upon the men of his day. His 
trumpet-call to duty still rings in our ears. His 
watchwords renew our hearts. He flogged men vio- 
lently yet they enjoyed the scourging. He was a tre- 
mendous force and power for righteousness. He was 
a literary artist. As a portrait painter his accuracy is 
thrilling. He could depict the grotesque. His humor 
is always grim and spontaneous ; it seizes us with con- 
scious delight. 

If you find dullness in the pages of Thomas Car- 
lyle you impart it. He had both insight and out- 
sight. He could transfix a man by an epithet. He 
was the Apostle of Retributive Justice. He was the 
embodiment of savage energy. He was an old He- 
brew. 

Carlyle was destructive rather than constructive. 
He did his best when he got mad. For example, he 
sympathized with Cromwell for what he destroyed, 
with Frederick the Great for what he destroyed, with 
Mirabeau and Danton for what they destroyed. He 
was the prophet who went for things. Yet he tried 
to sympathize with positive work. To Carlyle the 
world was out of joint. He was not practical. He 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEKATUKE 241 



denounced shams. He dealt with the everlasting yea 
and nay. He preached the gospel of industry. He 
uttered diatribes against idle aristocracies. He was 
dictatorial. He appreciated the religion of the vol- 
cano. He for the most part lived in the atmosphere 
of scorn. He trampled furiously upon himself 
sometimes. He was his own ideal. He manifested 
his genius chiefly through histories. Goethe was 
Carlyle's great literary hero. 

Froude's " Carlyle," as a book, is a tomb over 
which the lovers of Carlyle's genius will never cease 
to shed tears. 

Carlyle was an old Hebrew, he did not know 
Christ. His Bible had no New Testament. 

COMPARISONS. 

Frederick Harrison thinks the Parthenon of Phidias 
is as sacred as the Iliad of Homer; Giotto's Towers 
in Florence as precious as the " Paradiso " of Dante; 
the Westminster Abbey of England as immortal as 
the " Hamlet " of Shakespeare. 

Writing as a means of expression has to compete 
with talking. The talker need not rely wholly on 
what he says ; he has the help of his mobile face and 
voice, whereby he can insinuate fine shades of mean- 
ing, modify, intensify what he says. The writer must 
rely wholly on the words he chooses. By his choice 
and use of words, he must make you hear a voice and 
see a face. Whistler excels in this ; see his " The 
Gentle Art of Making Enemies." He projects him- 
self into the printed page. 



242 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANCE 



A fragment of a Japanese poem says: " There are 
men who walking along the common highway will 
pick up a stone, split it and take a gem out of it ; this 
is because they know gems. There are men who en- 
ter the very mountains of wealth and come out 
empty-handed; this is because they do not know 
gems. ,, 

" The holiness of beauty," Sidney Lanier's phrase, 
is as precious as " The beauty of holiness." 

The " Mahabharata," Hindu epic, is as old as the 
Iliad and seven times its bulk. It is a mine of poetic 
thought. Edwin Arnold's " The Song Celestial" or 
" Bhagavad-Gita " is from it. 

The Book of Ecclesiastes is the most modern book 
of the Bible. It is a distinct tonic for certain inevi- 
table moods. It has a message found in no other 
scripture. Written, we suppose, in the Persian or 
Greek period of Palestine's provincial history. It is 
bare of all reference to Priests or Prophets or the 
heroes of the Hebrews. It has a Persian, Stoic, Epi- 
curean tinge. Yet it is thoroughly Hebraic in soul. 
Its allusions suggest an Alexandrian source, cultured, 
cosmopolitan, sophisticated. Its theology and ethics 
are almost Sadducean. It has the voice of the Jew 
of to-day. Its question is the Hebrew one, — what 
profit? It is the only subjective book of the Bible ex- 
cept Job. It falls under the class of Heine, Byron, 
Pascal, and Omar Khayyam. The Persian Omar of- 
fers the clearest analogy to this Hebrew poet. The 
subject of both is life. The things that are done un- 
der the sun. They both speak in scorn. They do not 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 243 



care a little bit for life. To Omar " God is a good 
fellow and it will all be well somehow." It reminds 
one of Heine's blasphemy, " God will forgive ; it is 
His trade." Omar's prayer: " O God, I am weary 
of my existence, of my anguish and of my empty- 
handedness. Even as Thou bringest existence out of 
non-existence so take me out of my non-existence to 
the glory of true existence." 

BOOKS SUMMARIZED. 

Marcus Aurelius' " Meditations " is a most purely 
human book of books. 

" The Education of Henry Adams." A massive 
volume. It has been greeted with a wide-spreading 
chorus of praise. "Entrancing" is the adjective. 
" No one can afford to disregard it." " Full of en- 
tertaining incidents, dramatic narrative, sparkling 
wit, keen analysis of interesting personalities, it is a 
treasure house of joy. It is a marvellous book to 
read about and talk about and preach about. Here 
is art, science, literature. Here is wealth of political 
biography, history, of life behind the scenes in inter- 
national biography. Here are the greatest men of the 
last fifty years." " A Treasure House of Joy ! " I 
deny it. It is the saddest book that has come from 
the printing press in any country of the world since 
Guttenberg invented movable type, since the author of 
Ecclesiastes laid down his stylus and exclaimed, 
" Vanity of Vanities, all is Vanity ! " 

Here is the nemesis of negation. Our human na- 
ture needs God. This is what Frederick Harrison, 
the High Priest of Positivism, said thirty years ago. 
Harrison called on witnesses to prove his assertion, 



244 A BOOK OF KEMEMBRANCE 



Job, David, Solomon, Wesley, the prophets, Paul, 
Augustine, Bernard, a Kempis, Bunyan: witnesses 
Jewish, Christian, Mohammedan, Confucian, Bud- 
dhist, Protestant, Catholic, and Deist. These all dif- 
fer in expression, but are one in the substance of their 
thought, " My heart and my flesh cry out for God, 
yea, even for the living God." How about Henry 
Adams? He writes in the third person, and this is 
his account of the repudiation of religion: "The boy 
went to church twice a Sunday, he was taught to read 
the Bible: he learned religious poetry by heart: he 
believed in a mild dream: he prayed: he went through 
all the forms ; but neither to him nor to his brothers 
and sisters was religion real; even the mild discipline 
of the Unitarian Church was so irksome that they all 
threw it off at the earliest possible moment and never 
afterwards entered a church. The religious instinct 
had vanished and could not be revived, although one 
made in later life many efforts to recover it." (Ec- 
clesiastes over again.) Night descended upon him 
and left him in darkness. This agnostic attitude of 
mind characterizes the whole book. Here is the pose 
of the superiority of agnosticism. Adams thinks of 
himself as an historian sitting on the outside of the 
universe watching it go, and remarking that it does 
not go very well. For that matter he is going too. 
Oh, the pity of it! This man knew everybody, the 
son of Charles Francis Adams who represented the 
United States in London during the Civil War. He 
knew the inside of the British Government actions. 
It is intensely interesting. Gladstone puzzled him; 
but he puzzles us. (The book is largely the story of 
others. He knew everybody. John Hay was his 
closest friend.) He was at home in the White House 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITERATUKE 245 



with half a dozen of the Presidents. He says as the 
result of experience, " Power is poison. It has bad 
effects even on Presidents ; no man is so well balanced 
as to stand power.' ' 

"The Pure Gold of the Nineteenth Century," by 
Wm. Lyon Phelps of Yale. An attempt to appraise 
and assay the literary output of the nineteenth century 
confined to British production. The Elizabethan only 
can compare with the Victorian. 

Professor Goodell of Yale has prepared a little vol- 
ume called " The Greek in English " to facilitate the 
acquisition of Greek. The same method has been 
followed in the study of other languages. 

"The Room with the Tassels," Carolyn Wells. 
Ghosts: the determining factor is the dark. Ghosts 
and haunted houses are all very well at night, but 
daylight dispels them as sound breaks a silence. 

The Tales of Anton Chekhov, the great Russian, 
are told with breeziness and crispness and great 
punch. Something like O. Henry. He is the pos- 
sessor of a style called the best since de Maupassant. 

O. Henry's tales contain more frame than picture. 

Drummond's "Ascent of Man" is an attempt to 
evangelize Evolution. 

One of the great and original conceptions of Balzac 
is his "Unknown Masterpiece." There is hardly a 
work of equal brevity in modern literature which has 
been the object of so much envy and admiration. It 
is profound reading of the very heart of life. The 



246 A BOOK OF EEMEMBEANOB 



story is of an artist at work on the great picture of 
his life, a beautiful woman. He meant it to be per- 
fection. He had the fancy that as he worked the 
canvas became endued with life, the woman loved, he 
had wonderful fellowship with her. To illustrate a 
point he was arguing with two fellow artists, he drew 
the curtain and showed them his masterpiece. They 
were amazed to find no figure at all — only a mere 
mass of paint. Moral — don't make your ideal im- 
possible. 

Guy de Maupassant's "A Piece of String" is a 
veritable gem. A peasant who picked up a piece of 
string was accused of picking up a lost pocketbook. 
He died of grief because of the false accusation. 
" The Necklace " is another of his gems. A poor 
young couple went to a fashionable reception. It 
meant a new dress for the ambitious wife. She bor- 
rowed a necklace — lost it — grew old in paying for it. 
When old and worn out, she learned it was only 
paste. 

George Eliot's " Romola " stands forth as the his- 
tory of the soul, its decline and fall. At the begin- 
ning the beautiful boy Tito was crowned with inno- 
cence and purity, but at last he stands forth covered 
with infamy and shame as with garments of pollu- 
tion. 

In the " House of Seven Gables " Hawthorne 
exhibits one generation as sowing sins that are seeds, 
whose harvests of penalty are garnered by genera- 
tions that follow after. 

In his " Scarlet Letter " Hawthorne selects the one 



PHILOSOPHY ATO LITEKATUKE 247 



sin that has the most reasons against acknowledg- 
ment or confession and the one man in the commu- 
nity who would suffer the most by telling the truth, 
and he makes the sinner humbly confess. 

The gist of Drummond's book " Natural Law in 
the Spiritual World " is the analogy between God's 
sons in the realm of matter and His laws in the realm 
of spirit. 

George Eliot says of John Ruskin: " He teaches 
with the inspiration of a Hebrew Prophet." So does 
Carlyle. A volume of over three hundred pages 
shows the Scripture passages in Ruskin's writings. 
It is by Mary and Ellen Gibbs. Ruskin has the Old 
Testament delight in nature. 

Harriet Martineau condensed August Comte's six 
volumes into two volumes. Her condensation is the 
superior work. " To achieve," said Comte, " you 
must be married to your work." 

Froude's " Essay on Lucian." The men of genius 
who had the misfortune, under the later Roman Em- 
perors, to be blind to the truth of Christianity have 
been punished by neglect which they do not wholly 
deserve. They were charged with wilful sin. Taci- 
tus is an example. To neglect them causes a greater 
loss than we are aware of. They have literary mer- 
its. It is desirable that we become acquainted with 
the age in which Christianity became the creed of the 
civilized world. It grew in natural causes out of the 
conscience and intellect of man. Why were they un- 
convinced ? How did the new creed appear to them ? 



248 A BOOK OF EEMEMBBA^CE 



Nine out of ten would say Lucian was a scoffer and 
atheist who lived 120 a. d. He passed Christianity 
by as one of a thousand illusions. With lightning- 
like mockery and satire he struck at the absurdities 
of polytheism and paganism. He detested falsehood 
with a passion. Really he and his father were fight- 
ing on the same side. His satire was pungent. He 
had the keenness of Voltaire and the jest of Swift. 
Paganism was expiring and Christianity was taking 
its place. He never gave Christianity more than a 
passing attention. To him it was only one of the 
passing struggling sects, an offshoot of Judaism. 
He was constitutionally incredulous. Tales of 
miracles and mysteries only made him suspicious. 
The story of the child of a Galilean artisan of one 
hundred years ago, had been born of a virgin, had 
worked miracles, had been put to death, had gone 
down to Hades, and had again returned to life, — why, 
he would have answered that he could match that 
story by a hundred parables from his contemporary 
experience. Each generation produced its own 
swarm of pretenses to supernatural powers. An 
aged student in one of his dialogues confesses to 
have spent sixty years in comparing the schools of 
philosophy still hoping to find the truth, but still un- 
able to decide. Lucian tells of Peregrinus, a man 
who feasted and lived on notoriety. To get notoriety 
he announced that at the next Olympian Festival he 
would give the world a lesson in the contempt of 
death and would publicly burn himself. He expected 
that his admirers would interfere and prevent, but 
they did not. So he was in for it. When the pile 
was raised and kindled he had to leap into the flames. 
He did and perished. Lucian himself was present. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEEATUEE 249 



Some one asked him to describe the scene.- Among 
other things he said, " An eagle rose out of the flames 
and soared to heaven." He felt that he was talking 
to fools. This story which he himself had invented 
passed at once into popular belief. It was afterwards 
retailed to himself by another spectator who declared 
he had witnessed the extraordinary portent with his 
own eyes. This shows how impossible things get 
themselves believed. After such an experience it was 
not likely that Lucian would give easy credence to 
the tales of miracles and Christianity. Lucian was 
born at Samosata, not far from Antioch, 130 a. d. 

Of "The Light of Asia" O. W. Holmes writes: 
" It is a work of great beauty. It tells a story of in- 
tense interest. Its descriptions are drawn by the 
hand of a master, with the eye of a poet, and with 
the familiarity of an expert concerning the things 
described. Its tone is so lofty that there is nothing 
to which to compare it but the New Testament. It 
is full of variety, now picturesque, now pathetic, now 
rising into the noblest realms of thought and senti- 
ment. In Edwin Arnold Indian poetry and Indian 
thought have at length found a worthy English ex- 
ponent. It is the craftsmanship of a literary pen. 
Arnold idealizes just like the writers of the New Tes- 
tament." (Does he Christianize Buddha, or does he 
Paganize the Christ?) 

It would be difficult to find a more satisfactory 
analysis of the great religions than is contained in the 
hundred pages devoted to sacred books and how they 
originated in "The Sphere of Religion" by Frank 
Sargent Hoffman. 



250 A BOOK OF KEMEMBKANCE 



"The Greek Heroes" (Charles Kingsley — written 
for children but mighty fine). 

"Rab and His Friends," John Brown, M. D. A 
masterpiece of descriptive writing, such force and 
simplicity and naturalness. It illustrates how to take 
the commonest things of life and make them alive 
with interest. A brindle and grey dog; but a Hercu- 
les of a dog. A stub of a tail ; but it was expressive. 
It spake. 

Ouida's " Dog of Flanders " translated into differ- 
ent languages interests thousands. How does she tell 
her story? There is study here. 

Margaret Fuller was a talker, she was the talker, 
she was the genius of talk. She wrote the story of 
u The Brook Farm." It was to be a thorough appli- 
cation of the professed principles of fraternity to 
actual relations, a joint stock company. 

" Paris " by Zola. It is both descriptive and ana- 
lytical. Many of its scenes are intensely dramatic. 
In it are both beauty of the flesh and of the mind. 
Some characters horrify the reader. There are black 
pages. 

" Mademoiselle de Maupin," by Gautier. Next to 
Hugo comes Gautier, then Flaubert. Gautier was 
born 1811. He studied painting for a time; but laid 
aside the brush for the pen. His introduction to 
Victor Hugo when he was nineteen years old deter- 
mined this. His characteristics, spontaneity, fluency 
of expression, continuity of thought. De Maupin 
was given to the world in 1836. Rich poetic coloring. 



PHILOSOPHY AND LITEBATUEE 251 



He possessed the instincts of a painter. As a writer 
he rejoices in form, light, color and in language that 
expresses these. The keenness of his pictorial sense. 
He aimed at a closer connection between literature 
and the sister arts of painting and sculpture. Had he 
an insight into humanity? Critics say "No." For 
politics, social development, religious problems, 
science and progress, he does not care a straw. No 
deep teaching, therefore, is to be looked for in him, 
no discovery of new truth, or fresh presentation of 
old. His ideal is simply beauty. " Mile, de Mau- 
pin " especially shows his genius. It is an exquisite 
lyric in prose, a glorious song in praise of the au- 
thor's ideal, beauty. 



Alphabetical Index 



Sub-Title Chapter Page 

Beauty VII 162 

Bible, The I 23 

Bible Helps I 28 

Books Summarized VIII 243 

Carlyle VIII 240 

Children V 151 

Christ I 13 

Church, The I 29 

Classics, The VIII 216 

Common People, The VIII 235 

Companionship IV 141 

Comparisons VIII 241 

Conversation IV 143 

Death I 90 

Defeat IV 137 

Denunciation IV 137 

Desires IV 136 

Development IV 143 

Duties IV 134 

Eloquence IV 142 

Ethics VIII 231 

Evidences for Eternity I 85 

Faith II 96 

Fathers and Mothers V 150 

God's Logic I 72 

Great Lives IV 120 

Heroic Heart, The II 99 

High Society IV 138 

History VI 152 

Human Will, The I 72 

Humor VIII 233 

Illustrations VIII 216 

Inspiration II 105 

Jews, The , I 93 

Literary Art VIII 179 

Little Sermons I . . . , , 40 

253 



254 ALPHABETICAL INDEX 

Sub-Title Chapter Page 

Lord's Supper, The I 72 

Love II 98 

Maxims II 109 

Ministers I 31 

Music VII 171 

Narrative VIII 223 

Nature and the Eternal I 86 

Patriotism Ill 117 

Peace and War Ill 119 

Personalities IV 129 

Personal Side, The VIII 202 

Philosophy VIII 178 

Poets VIII 192 

Prayers I . 55 

Prophets I 92 

Prose Writers, The .'VIII 188 

Punishment IV 137 

Puritanism I 94 

Reading VIII 185 

Reasoners, The VIII 234 

Religion in Books VIII 229 

Science and the Soul. I 89 

Self-Examination II 107 

Shakespeare VIII 235 

Side Lights VIII 216 

Statesmanship Ill 119 

Study VIII 184 

Symbolism VII 168 

Sympathy II 98 

Thanksgiving II 100 

Theatre, The VII 173 

Travel VI 160 

Truth II 98 

Wealth IV 138 

Wedded State, The V 149 

Women IV , 139 

Words VIII 228 

Work IV 134 

Writers and Non-Writers VIII 187 

Youth and Age IV 147 

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